Josh Kmak of The New Kinetics and Shady Francos has a new band, Creepseed. This video is from their debut performance at the Casbah. Joining Josh in Creepseed are O from fluff and the Makeup Sex, Josh from Shady Francos and Sheila & the Rainbow Colored Trash bags, and Ana from The Makeup Sex and Spin Records. Sitting in on this song is Brian Reilly of the New Kinetics on the right.
Tonight was a reverse order concert for me as I came to see the first group up, the debut of Creepseed. My plan was to stay and watch a couple songs by the second group, San Diego’s The Heartaches, and then take off unless they were really good. All I can say is that by the time they got to the chorus of their first song, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere during this set!
Somehow I had never heard of this band of garagey punk rockers who have been around since 2002. Apparently I need to pay better attention to what’s going on, since The Heartaches put on a blistering set full of massive riffs, shouted choruses, endless energy and just enough melody to attract more than just a punk audience. The Heartaches seem like a real throwback group as I could hear influences from throughout punk’s early history – from the early days of The Damned and The Clash overseas to The Ramones and Dead Kennedys on this side of the pond. All of it delivered with a ferocious attack on dual guitars, bass and drums and fronted by a singer with enough energy to power The Casbah’s sound system on his own.
Don’t make the mistake I did – check out The Heartaches – and for god’s sake, don’t look at your cell phone while they’re playing!!
I won’t pretend to understand how all the members of local super-group, Birdy Bardot, are interrelated. It seems that every San Diego musician of note is in at least 3 bands and this group has collected many of them together. I do know that the creative duo in the group are Birdy Bardot, who also sings for of my favorite San Diego bands, The New Kinetics; and the indefatigable Al Howard, who must be in at least 27 bands including: The Heavy Guilt, Midnight Pine, Dani Bell & the Tarantist, Rebecca Jade & the Cold Fact, Cardinal Moon and Black Sands.
I have wanted to catch Birdy Bardot ever since I read a great feature on them late last year in CityBeat magazine. It was only after reading that article that I went to my first New Kinetics shows and I was curious to how the same singer would front both the frenetic garage rock of NK and the retro/psychedelic influence promised in the CityBeat piece.
It turns out that Ms. Bardot handles both styles with ease and though there is not a lot of overlap in sound, she does seem to lose herself in the songs in both configurations. Where the New Kinetics are all about raw, relentless energy, Birdy Bardot is a much more restrained affair. Though the group does let go and rock out, like on the track “Hearts and Smoke”, it’s really just enough to provide a contrast to the soulful, torchy atmosphere created throughout the rest of the set.
The 7 pc band (which is a lot of players on a pretty small stage) creates a sound and mood on stage that mixes a lot of influences without ever camping out in any one style. There’s touches of the blues, hazy psychedelia, retro-60′s pop and even some alt-country. Mixed together, Birdy Bardot – both the band and the singer – put on a fantastic show and will clearly be a mainstay of the resurgent San Diego music scene, and hopefully can find a way to break out and receive more national, and even international, attention.
Check out Birdy Bardot and her label-mates at Redwoods Music/Birdy Bardot
Indie rock stalwarts Built to Spill played back-to-back sold out shows last week at San Diego’s venerable rock club, the Casbah. This quickly became a tough ticket to get as the band typically plays much larger venues when they hit town. The Casbah can fit only 200, and even with two shows, demand easily exceeded supply. The Casbah has a reputation though for punching above its weight and the band apparently likes the venue as they have played there several other times throughout the years.
And really it was great to see a band of such stature in such an intimate setting. The crowd was responsive and enthusiastic throughout the performance and the band responded with a 1:50 set (which is long by Casbah standards) that included at least half of the new album, last year’s excellent Untethered Moon. One of the highlights from that record was “So” which included a typical Doug Martsch guitar freak-out to start the song before settling into a riffy, melodic groove. For an encore – and by encore I mean the band leaves the stage and walks out to the sidewalk until they are called back in – they performed an epic, slow building, version of “Time Trap” off of 1999′s Keep It Like a Secret.
If I were to find fault in the show it is that they performed as a 3-piece with only Martsch on guitar. As good a guitar player as he is, and he is really good, he can’t play two guitars at once. One of the strengths of BTS is the interplay between multiple guitars, both with a lead over the top of a rhythm guitar or with intertwining leads as on the aforementioned “Time Trap”. Hopefully next time around the band will be back to full strength, but either way I’ll be there wherever they decide to play.
MaxSoundsMusic 