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4Play
By Don Allred
The Blastronauts
Wednesday @ Skully's
A flock of budget electronics, strongly suggesting feathers, eyes, beaks, claws, screeches and songs, fly around and through the guitar necks and drumsticks of The Blastronauts. It's all happening in the funky telescope of "Galileo," the first of four EPs celebrating astronomers. Whether or not the psych-pop Blastronauts have, like G., been shown the instruments of torture, they're jauntily bitter, cheerfully defiant, even tunefully raucous. They're also community-minded, so flock to this benefit for the Full Belly Food Drive, co-starring The Loyal Divide and The Town Monster. Yum!
Red Fang
Friday @ Summit
It's really industriously evil, the way that "sludge" has crept into reviewers' complimentary boxes of chocolates. But it does fit the way Red Fang's self-titled debut's thick tide suddenly rises into the long shadow of punk 'n' metal history. That's where the sludge mostly grows blessedly efficient critters. "Prehistoric Dog" sets the pace, stomping and shuffling between Rufus Thomas's Memphis out-cat special, "Walking The Dog," and the Stooges' basement-bred "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Yeah, it's basically familiar stuff, but can inspire the ancient mutants' cry, "Humans remain/Human remains!"
John McCutcheon
Sunday @ Unitarian Universalist Church
"Our chins a-drool with sticky bliss/Eyes rolled back in our heads/Next to a three-piece business suit/And a homeless guy in dreads." Folksinger/multi-instrumentalist John McCutcheon is floating through doughnut heaven, in "Krispy Kreme." He also knows that, "Like beauty too/Its time is fleet," so get 'em fresh-baked. McCutcheon learned a lot in Appalachia, and most other places. On TV, he heard about "Sara Tucholsky," a senior citizen with a blown-out knee, trying to make every base so her home run will count. Everything McCutcheon sings about counts.
Aloud
Tuesday @ Bernie's
Henry Beguiristain could make elegantly sad young music - so could Jen de la Osa -but when he contemplates being "fatalistic," she rhymes it with "sadistic." Aloud's "Fan The Fury" updates X's Exene Cervenka and John Doe's dynamically domestic civil war, now spilling into the streets and vice versa, as hyper-aware, media-bombarded harmonies and discord fall into place and fly by, between the sheets and screens. The personal and the political trust and bust, while Aloud's co-leaders' voices and guitars insist, "The end will be our beginning," once again.
Originally Published: November 11, 2009
