Friday/December/25
In a state of decay: The Outskirts
Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking into the New Year
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Gabriel Andruzzi (of the Rapture) at Avalon
As fans of New York’s finest dance-punk outfit know all too well, the Rapture are taking their sweet time crafting the follow-up to 2006’s excellent Pieces of the People We Love. In a July blog post announcing singer-bassist Mattie Safer’s departure from the group, sax-and-synth dude Gabriel Andruzzi wrote that he and his remaining bandmates have been writing and demo-ing, but that “it’s still gonna be a minute before we hit the studio for real.” In the meantime they’ve been playing sporadic live shows and polishing their celebrity-DJ resumes; fortunately, as demonstrated on last year’s Tapes mix for !K7, these guys make the latter seem like an honorable pursuit. Any mix that unites Ghostface Killah, the Bar-Kays and Armand Van Helden is okay by us. This week Andruzzi headlines Avalon’s Friday-night Control party, and because that happens to coincide with Christmas, the club’ll knock 10 bucks off the cover if you bring an unopened toy for charity. (Mikael Wood)
Saturday/December/26
Hepcat at House of Blues
Ska, the effervescent mid-’60s precursor to reggae, was as crucial to Jamaican pop as rockabilly was here in America, and while each endured for only a brief span of years, both of these influential styles constantly recur, thanks to cyclical eruptions of well-intentioned but oft-ludicrous revivalists. Ska stewards Hepcat are the noble exception to that rule, a band that has perfected the art of owning the style’s musical bedrock and upholding its traditions with excruciating precision, even while informing it with carefully administered jolts of their own creative impulses. That’s a damn nifty trick, and over the course of the past two decades, despite several extended hiatuses, personnel departures, even death, Hepcat has remained an exemplary force, a group whose combination of technique, good taste and genuine sincerity results in music that is not only moving — it also really moves. (Jonny Whiteside)
Danny B. Harvey,Mason & Co., RubyJames at Taix
Taix booker Mason hosts a big combo party tonight where he’s celebrating his birthday, Christmas and “the last Saturday of the decade.” As such, the lineup is a good cross-section of the diverse performers who regularly play on the tiny stage in this French restaurant’s lounge. The Lonesome Spurs’ Danny B. Harvey is a scintillating rockabilly guitarist who’s worked with Wanda Jackson, Johnny Ramone and Nancy Sinatra. Tonight he strums a set of his own tunes before he heads west down Sunset Boulevard later in the week to the Viper Room, where he’s playing a New Year’s Eve gig in the Buddy Holly–fixated trio the Head Cat with Motorhead’s Lemmy Kilmister and the Stray Cats’ Slim Jim Phantom. Mason and Harvey are also taking part this evening in Mason & Co., a veritable supergroup of Taix loyalists that features Marc Doten, power-pop guitarist (and former Brady Bunch regular) Robbie Rist and the versatile underground/art-rock drummer Joe Berardi (the Fibonaccis, Double Naught Spy Car, Ann Magnuson, Lydia Lunch et al.). Austin, Texas, singer Ruby James and go-go dancer Moana Santana are also scheduled to appear. As usual, there’s no cover, which makes Taix one of the best musical bargains in town. (Falling James)
Also playing Saturday:
CUT CHEMIST at the Echoplex; STEPHEN PEARCY at the Roxy; SALT-N-PEPA at Club Nokia; MICHAEL SCHENKER GROUP at the Canyon; WAMPIRE, ASSS at the Echo Curio.
Sunday/December/27
Riot Grrl Christmas Carnival feat. the Outskirts, Las Sangronas y El Cabrón, Toy Attica, the Potential Lunatics at the Smell
Despite the surfeit of Muzak-y holiday tunes and soft-jazz interpretations of junk like “Frosty the Snowman,” there’s no official rule that mandates that Christmas music has to be saccharine, soulless and insufferably bland. Tonight’s “Riot Grrl Xmas Carnival” is not only for a good cause — benefiting the Downtown Women’s Center — but it also features ruthlessly energetic, rude, silly and loud femme-fronted punk bands. The Outskirts’ Charlie De Kay is not exactly reverential about babes in mangers on “Anti-Christ Devil Children,” and she transforms the Ramones’ version of “California Sun” into a boozy ode to getting trashed, “All Fucked Up.” Las Sangronas y El Cabrón crank out an even skuzzier form of hard-core on blistering rants like “Brujeria” and “Bitter Youth.” The South Bay’s Toy Attica contrast their colorfully playful fashion sense with a dark sound that infuses post-punk bursts like “Mr. Feline” with an arty goth decadence; they get even stranger amid the rusty echoes of the creepy pop idyll “Somewhere.” The Potential Lunatics are a sibling duo featuring singer-guitarist Emma Simons-Araya (age 14) and drummer Isaac Simons-Araya (age 11!), and they do indeed reveal crazy potential on embryonic, thoughtfully unfolding indie-rock reveries like “Deranged Love Song.” (Falling James)
