Rock Picks: Riot Girl Carnival, Miniature Tigers, Death Cab for Cutie, Deer Tick

FRIDAY, JULY 3

Deer Tick: Skewed tribute to a country tradition gone terribly wrong

John Fogerty offers a fitting soundtrack to Independence Day.

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More About

• KISS (Band)
• Hollywood Bowl
• John Fogerty
• Folk Music
• Fourth of July

Infinity, Priss at Spaceland
Irony alert: Spaceland, which plays host to some of the city’s best indie and post-indie rock shows, will Give the People What They Want tonight when two cover bands offer eye-winking performances of Kiss and Journey songs. We just coined that term — Post-Indie — by the way, and will figure out exactly what we mean by that in the near future. Perhaps the definition of Post-Indie will comprise transcending irony and long-tail theory to create a music that kowtows to the People, that uncovers those basest of musical desires — melody, chorus, lyrical platitudes, clichés aplenty — and offers them honestly, sans irony, with great enthusiasm and without fear of embarrassment or hipster dismissal. Like Journey, and Kiss, two bands of the ’70s/’80s that will outlive a million Clap Your Hands Say Yeahs. So Infinity is a female-fronted tribute to Journey; maybe you can imagine what that will sound like. And Priss is a female-fronted tribute to Kiss, and maybe you can imagine what that will sound like. There are fake mustaches involved, apparently. And fake beards. And “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” and “Beth” and “Any Way You Want It.” Sound dubious? Come on: It’s Fourth of July weekend, the perfect time to celebrate America in all its basest glory.  (Randall Roberts)

John Fogerty at the Hollywood Bowl
John Fogerty’s music is as American as baseball and apple pie, and it should provide a fitting soundtrack for this holiday-weekend fireworks celebration. His populist solo songs and earlier work with Creedence Clearwater Revival have proved to be timelessly evocative snapshots of a vanishing rural Americana, influencing mainstream singers like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger as well as such underground musicians as Lydia Lunch and the Gun Club. Despite his generally sunny optimism, Fogerty is also capable of unexpectedly stinging social commentary, whether he’s decrying how the upper class avoided the draft during the Vietnam War in CCR’s “Fortunate Son” or casting a skeptical look at George Bush’s reasons for invading Iraq in 2004’s “Déjà Vu (All Over Again).” He’s been fairly prolific in the past decade (after dropping out of sight through much of the ’70s and ’80s due to his notorious, creativity-sapping legal battles with a former label boss), and he’s preparing to release a new CD of country-music covers, The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again, the long-awaited sequel to his 1973 one-man-band album, The Blue Ridge Rangers. He’ll be backed tonight for a few songs by the L.A. Philharmonic, although it’s debatable whether Fogerty’s trademark streamlined tunes need much gussying up. Also Sat.  (Falling James)

Also playing Friday:

KILLSONIC, BEATNIK JR., VANPRASTA, ANGELS & DEMONS at the Troubadour; CACTUS PRICKS, THE STABBINGS, SIOUX CITY PETE & THE BEGGARS, THE CRYSTELLES at American Legion Post 206; PENTAGRAM, NACHTMYSTIUM, INTRONAUT, RADIO MOSCOW at House of Blues; ONE TRICK PONY, EMA & THE GHOSTS, THE SLEEPING BAGS, VOICES VOICES, SEASONS at Mr. T’s Bowl; BACTERIA CULT, ANDORKAPPEN, XDUGEF, KAWAIIETLY PLEASE at the Smell.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

Riot Girl Carnival with The Potential Lunatics, Mermaid, A Pretty Mess at the Smell
Last year’s Christmastime benefit for the Downtown Women’s Center brought a grip of all-girl and mostly-girl bands to the Smell for a noble cause — but this time the benefit comes with more variety, a welcome diversion from December’s show that packed in mostly hardcore screamers (with the exception of Anus Kings, who are here again this time). The Potential Lunatics, for example, are siblings (not in the Meg and Jack way) Emma and Isaac Simons-Araya, who are 13 and 11 years old, respectively. Emma and Isaac throw down fierce, melody-driven power pop and occasionally play all-acoustic sets. Mermaid bring their underager rager chic from San Diego’s East County, rocking their brand of huggable hardcore in homemade clothes and feminist ennui. A Pretty Mess’s tight sonic brutality hearkens back to L7’s Smell the Magic days. These four Valley girls force-feed a less political bent than the others, pummeling the crowd without chipping any of their glossy black nail polish in the process. Plus they do a wicked version of “Cherry Bomb.”  (Wendy Gilmartin)

Deer Tick, Dawes at Spaceland
Providence, Rhode Island, is the birthing place of many peculiarly varied bands, for some damn reason. Why, there’s Talking Heads, Black Dice and Lightning Bolt, and how about Wendy Carlos, Bill Conti, the Cowsills, Tavares and the towering giants John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band? Now add to that illustrious list Deer Tick, the for-a-new-Americana project of musical prodigy/Hank Williams–obsessive John McCauley III. Following the 2007 War Elephant album — an entirely McCauley-performed affair that blew critical minds internationally — the new Born on Flag Day (Partisan) is Deer Tick’s second full-length of skewed tributes to a country tradition gone terribly wrong, rusting rootsily in a Dylanesque haze of folky strum and road-weary harmonica wheeze. The now fully manned Deer Tick frame the snarly twangs of this howling hayseed McCauley in provocative scrapings-off of the old country crud, sometimes thrashing desperately, more often inspiring deeply with the simple, stately strokes of their playing, and McCauley’s sweatily earnest commitment to the music, times and places he’s loved, hated and survived. (John Payne)