July 29, 2009 8:00pm
Circus
1227 N. High Street
(614) 421-2998
$7
Ages 18+, under 21 pays $2 surcharge at the door
Yourself and The Air
http://www.myspace.com/yourselfandtheair
You’ve got to admire this band’s work ethic. Coming mere months after their full-length debut Cold Outside Brings Heavy Thoughts to Think, Yourself and the Air’s second EP Friends of All Breeds finds the Chicago quintet rapidly approaching maturity as songwriters. Although none of the five tracks come close to matching the teetering, breakneck intensity of earlier YATA highlights like “zZz” or “Fuck You, Walk Home,” their newest EP is easily their tightest and most melodically complex.
All the elements that initially drew me to the band are still present. Like The Pixies, Yourself and the Air are experts at building songs around distinct guitar movements that shift seamlessly into one another on a smooth rotation. Best of all, they do it without sounding like a shallow imitation of The Pixies. Erick Crosby’s frantic yelp continues to inject energy and tension into even the most sedate of the band’s offerings.
Yet Friends of All Breeds also marks a colossal step forward for YATA. They rely less on the bass-snare dance beats of their previous releases, which frees them up to play around with more complex song structures. Case-in-point is the marvelous “So You’ve Come Here to Mingle.” The song opens with a gently lurching melody, the rhythm section intermittently dropping away while the lead guitars weave gossamer trails around one another. A chorus of handclaps and “Whoa ohs” segue into a signature shift as the tempo picks up, and finally all the diffuse melodic elements collapse into a blazing punk-battering ram. It’s the band’s most ambitious composition to date.
Keyboardist Jeff Papendorf returns on this EP, following an almost year-long absence. His contributions remain subtle, but add a necessary counter-melody to Crosby’s and Nicholas Sinclair’s guitar work on songs like “Less is Less” and “My Friends Are in Love with a Feeling.” Papendorf’s presence is most keenly felt on album opener “Heart Strings.” The jingling synth expands the melody laid out by Drew Rasmussen’s subdued drumbeat and Sinclair’s fragile, high-pitched guitar plucking.
The proximity of Yourself and the Air’s releases (three in a little over two years) allows the listener to track the band’s gradual evolution, their continual stylistic refinement. If they can keep up this pace and maintain this quality of work, then it’s only a matter of time before the world outside of Chicago starts to take notice. - Joe Hemmerling, Tiny Mix Tapes
Pomegranates
http://www.myspace.com/pomegranatesart
Pomegranates hail from Cincinnati, OH, where drummer Jacob Merritt, guitarist Isaac Karns, and vocalist/guitarist Joey Cook launched the pop-based indie rock band in 2006. Taking influence from early Modest Mouse and Wolf Parade, the musicians honed their craft and issued the Two Eyes EP in June 2007. Bassist Josh Kufeldt joined the following year, and Pomegranates released their full-length debut, Everything Is Alive, that May. After sharing stages with the likes of Javelins, Islands, and Headlights, the band decamped to northern Kentucky to record their sophomore album, which was subsequently mixed and mastered by Aloha’s TJ Lipple in Arlington, VA. The resulting Everybody, Come Outside!, a conceptual record whose sound paid homage to both Talking Heads and French Kicks, was released in April 2009 by Lujo Records. - ©1992-2009 All Media Guide, LLC
Six Gallery
http://myspace.com/SixGallery
Columbus-based Six Gallery’s debut album, “Breakthroughs in Modern Art,” is pungently fueled by passion, and expertly charted by star-crossed irony. The words blur sometimes, but discreetly persistent crooner Daniel J. is figuring it all out, as his bright-eyed swoon orbits the moon (of Six Gallery’s compressed, never constricted dynamics), unerringly passing once again through love’s golden flame, where “I wish I was convincing as you are/But I’m not second-guessing what we are.” But he’s not ready to be a stationary museum piece either: “I’m like/The things you said you’d always do!” - UWeekly