“One two, Check, one two/ One two, Check, one two/ One two, Check, one two/ Check. We love all the people/ And we love to rock the house/ No one knows we’re coming/ So no one’s coming out/ To this particular rock club/ Have we played this club before?/ Y’see, I can’t remember/ If we’ve played this club before.”—“Rock Club” by They Might Be Giants, originally recorded for Podcast 35A in 2008 but featured on Dial-a-Song, Week 29, July 2015.This particular version of Show Up will be memorable. You won’t have to worry about forgetting whether you’ve heard this or that band before or even if the club or concert hall you decide to check out is familiar or not. It’s our sincere hope here at the Alibi that you’ll have such a good time rocking out or getting into a jazz trance or whatever that you’ll come back again and again to this very page searching for light, love and everlasting jammability.
Show Up!: Thursday
Some Russian Girlfriends
Courtesy of the band
Russian Girlfriends is a band that’s come up through our local scene and landed a favored spot among listeners and reviewers alike. They’re punk rockers that come laden with the accoutrements of the genre but also add sharply acidic ensemble playing to their bounty of blissfully blasted-out sound. The band makes a triumphant return to the Duke City on Thursday, Sept. 3, at Sister (407 Central NW) after undertaking a fairly dangerous tour of Midwestern America in support of their latest release, All Around. Plainly punk with a flavor that the recalls the east-coast heaviness, guitar gymnastics and pounding rhythm sections of bands like Bad Brains while also entertaining a certain left-coast flair (Dead Kennedys, Germs, Descedents) that comes out in singer Adam Hook’s wailing melodicism, Russian Girlfriends is a helluva listen. The band Brutally Frank and OG, surfing-cow-punk stalwarts Jonny Cats open. Tickets to this 21+ fierce fiesta will run you five simoleons. Doors are at 8 and show time is set for 9 that night.
Show Up!: Friday
The Historic El Rey Theater (622 Central SW) is host to Purity Ring on Friday, Sept. 4. This is an electro-pop/hip-hop duo with simmering, shiny undertones that’s recently caught the attention of media outlets as divergent as The New Yorker and Entertainment Weekly. That must mean something, but for those unwilling to indulge the descriptions of either bank of the mainstream press, here’s a summary. Their quintessentially quirky combination of Witch House chillwave aesthetics, PoMo pop and psychedelic breakbeat tendencies will either drive you gratefully insane or get you tumbling madly toward the interwebz post-concert to soak up as much of their oeuvre as humanly possible. Vocalist Megan James’ translucently succinct soprano weaves itself wondrously through multi-instrumentalist Corin Roddick’s exhaustive catalog of atmospheric sounds and melodic departures. It’s like someone gathered together the late-night/early morning playlist of BBC Radio Two, circa 1998 and distilled that into something spectacularly listenable yet infinitely intricate. Admission to this 18+ meeting of minds and bodies costs between $24-29; Purity Ring begins their diagrammatic discourse at 8:30 pm.
Show Up!: Saturday
On Saturday, Sept. 5, a rollicking night of homegrown, hard-rocking indie style music will be furiously featured at Launchpad (618 Central SW) for the CD release party thrown by Burque band Throw The Temple. Their debut recording is called No Way But Down, dig? Led by the crunchy, feedback drenched guitar playing of Matias Garcia and swashbuckling singing of Gabriel Gambino, Throw the Temple engages in a form of rocanrol that grinds its way gracefully through the air before entering your brain and exploding. Add the Jovian rhythm section of Kody Audette (Bass) and Kent Sidlow (Drums) to the mix and the result is bound to be raucous and rewarding. This weekend expedition to our little town’s monolithic hard rock scene also includes Anesthesia, Modus Operandi and The Talking Hours. They’re outfits whose commitment to the lofty realm of buck-wild tuneage can be exemplified on tracks like “Cinder”, a Modus Operandi piece that combines dense and detailed instrumentation with the Venusian vocals of chanteuse Jackie Gillespie. It’ll cost interested individuals over the age of 21 $5-8 for entry into this reflection of Albuquerque’s sonic swagger; the voyage begins at 9 pm.
Show Up!: Sunday
This year’s Roost Creative Music Series at the Tricklock Performance Laboratory (110 Gold SW) continues to break ground with innovative programming that fearlessly swoops toward the edge of the earth, embracing the abyss before ascending to new heights and delights in musical experience. The recital to be performed as part of the series on Sunday, Sept. 6, highlights this lofty tendency. It includes the somewhat minimalist yet provocative explorations of Tin / Bag, a duo comprised of guitarist Mike Bagetta and trumpeter Kris Tiner. Their music literally explores the spaces between silence and sound. Also featured will be the collaborative work of flautist Jane Rigler and prepared guitar player Janet Feder. Feder uses a technique where the timber of the instrument is deconstructed by placing objects on or between strings—a method composer John Cage popularized among avant-garde piano composers—for an effect that can be disarming but harmonically fascinating. Rigler’s a seasoned performer whose tonal vocabulary is stunningly intuitive. Taken together, these two small ensembles represent the current direction of art music—innovative for it’s embrace of experimentalism while maintaining a duteous bond to a tradition that envisions composition and performance as a purifying process. This all ages induction to innovation is priced at $7 and rolls out into our world by the river at 7:30 pm.
Show Up!: Monday
Burt’s Tiki Lounge (313 Gold SW) continues our city’s own tradition of processing locally righteous aural activities on Monday, Sept. 7, by presenting Nuevo Mexicano singer/songwriter Sean Lucy, a long-haired, hat-wearing dude from Las Cruces whose song “Fat Man in the Golden Suit” took my ears to town with it’s rambling, pre-electric, Dylanesque take on life and success in the material world. Lucy will be opening for Chicagoan Jennifer Hall, she of the earthy and soul-inflected style that incorporates complex melodies awash with wickedly winsome vocals. Albuquerque songwriter Paul Hunton begins the evening’s enchanting and evocative escapade. Like many of the gigs at the legendary tiki lounge, this 21+ show is free and all of it can be yours starting at 9 pm that night.
Show Up!:
I can’t remember if I’ve said this before, but even if I have (and I have) it bears repeating. You can rock the house by getting out of the house. With a wide variety of totally ginchy and timelessly hep venues available to you here in Dirt City, you may never have to reach the wan, post-tour resignation described by Flansburgh and Linnell in “Rock Club.” And that’s a good thing … maybe even better than the song itself.
