The aptly named "I'm So Spun" places cold robotic distance between the fraying vocal and guitar lines (and like "It's My Habit," it also focuses on android intoxications). With Dean Whitmore's drumbeats falling like heavy raindrops around this cloudy soundscape, this ghost from the near past should fit nicely with the current PiL-fashioned post-punkers. (In this incestuous city of bands splitting their members like atoms to form increasingly more side projects, Finberg's other band, the Intelligence, plays the Fun House this Friday, November 14, a show I highly recommend.)
Last week I hit the Fun House to see BlackBelt--four guys who've racked up only a half-dozen or so shows in their short existence. Unfortunately (I later realized), I was standing under a blown speaker for most of their set, so the sound wasn't at its prime, but the band still made a great impression on the audience. Like These Arms Are Snakes, BlackBelt mix elements of hardcore with an atmospheric blend of space and math rock, pulling back from straight punk aggression to offer a more dynamic hybrid that's both moody and melodic, fronted by a singer who actually sings (as opposed to practicing how raw he can scrape his throat by growling like a demon). BlackBelt are definitely a group to keep an eye on.
Even as club owners are complaining about poor ticket sales with the arrival of winter (everything I hit last week, from Akimbo to Ex Models to Spiritualized, was markedly underattended), a couple of new venues are generating buzz. It's sounding like the Hideaway (the new 200-capacity club, co-owned by Dave Eck, that takes up a chunk of the old Sit & Spin space) will be opening around New Year's, with a show that, if all goes according to rumor, will be a perfect punk start to 2004. Another new club--whose name is still unknown to me at presstime--is supposed to open up near the stadiums downtown and is said to have a bigger capacity than the Showbox. I just hope it does better than the Northgate--which, by the way, was a great venue for tailgating. My experience seeing Motörhead at that old theater was one of my favorite gatherings of the crazy tribes this year. And I've been hearing a lot about the Lo_Fi performance gallery (429B Eastlake Ave E). It sounds like Lo_Fi's been putting on a lot of indie hiphop events, and this Friday, November 14, it'll have KEXP DJ B-Mello and X104's DJ Funkdaddy spinning until 2:00 a.m. I've also heard talk of the Eagle expanding to allow for some future live music from time to time.
And pants off to Mario from the Girls, who was apparently apprehended recently on the band's current tour for drunk and disorderly (i.e., buck naked) conduct--in Texas, of all places. I heard the confident (or, should we say, intoxicated) drummer decided to get some fresh air outside his hotel room on a stop through Texas and attracted a lot of attention--not from the ladies, but from the law, who put Mario in the slammer for the night as their equally exposed bassist, Nick Markel, ran from the cops. What those two were doing letting it all hang out on the wrong side of their hotel-room door--in the middle of Texas, no less--is beyond me, but then again, I prefer my skinny-dipping to involve water.
