Polvo comes to the Brillobox this Thursday with The Ceiling Stares

Plan Your Week Accordingly: August 9 to August 15

Monday August 9
- mewithoutYou with Murder By Death @ Mr. Small’s
mewithoutYou – Timothy Hay

Murder by Death – Foxglove

Thursday August 12
- Polvo with The Ceiling Stares, Broughton Rules @  Brillobox
Polvo – Beggar’s Bowl

- Horse Feathers @ Club Cafe
Horse Feathers – Blood on the Snow

Sunday August 15
We Are Scientists with Bad Veins, Satin Gum @ Brillobox
We Are Scientists – Pittsburgh

Bad Veins – Gold And Warm

Remember that time when you heard about that awesome show, but only after the fact, and then you got that weird feeling in your stomach, like when you went too high on the playground swings? Plan Your Week Accordingly is a new feature of Speed of the Pittsburgh Sound which aims to help you never ever have that feeling again (at least about shows). We highlight the “must-sees” from our perspective, give you the date and the locale, and leave the rest to your impeccable/implacable discretion. Shows and tracks after the jump.

For the Week of July 12 – 18

Tuesday, July 13
- Kurt Vile and Real Estate @ Garfield Artworks
Kurt Vile – Hunchback

Thursday, July 15
- Jon Spencer Blues Explosion @ Diesel
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Orange

- Clem Snide and The Heligoats @ Club Cafe
Clem Snide – The Meat Of Life

Sunday, July 18
- Old 97′s @ Mr. Smalls
Old 97′s – Jagged

Yeah, I’m a novice.  Nicole Atkins is one of those dark, smoldering ingenues who converts humans into disciples with no more than a fiery glance.  During her live shows these humans, guys and gals alike, swoon in measured droves,  pray for their favorite songs and stand mystified, religiously mystified, as Ms. Atkins seduces the stage.

Along with her faithful backing band, The Black Sea, Atkins played a full room at the South Side’s Club Cafe Tuesday evening as the concert spot’s smokey corners and starry backdrop played a perfect supporting character (with the exception of a blown out monitor) to the bombastic qualities of Atkins best work (the street anthems, symphonies, and Patsy Cline homages alike) that were allowed to howl unmitigated into the rainy Pittsburgh evening. 

Atkins and co. soared through the highlights of 2007′s Neptune City, including a seriously red-blooded version of “Brooklyn’s on Fire” that incited more than a handful of fist pumps during the shit-kicking refrain.  The honest, innocent shuffle of “Maybe Tonight” translated beautifully as well, as the classic chorus (which, again, resembles something like a unearthed Patsy Cline croon) floated sagaciously toward the heavens.

Even “The Way It Is,” a song that was showcased in all its theatrical glory during an unforgettable performance on David Letterman, was given fantastic treatment due to Atkins unbelievable vocals.  I was convinced that without a chorus of swelling strings, the song would be a shadow of its former self, but it actually provided more room for Atkins to flex her voice and emote passionately to the crowd.

After the debut of a handful of new tracks, whetting the crowds appetite for Atkins ensuing 2010 release, an encore of the funeral stomp “Neptune City” provided a fragile and tragic coda.  The show ended with a base drum wash and Atkins’ enacting a graceful curtsy, head bowed, to a heavy applause.  I shook my head, swigged the last inch of my las beer, thought of October and the coming Halloween as I looked to a friend of mine who took the words right out of my mouth : “That shit is haunting.”

Nicole Atkins – Maybe Tonight

Nicole Atkins – The Way It Is

Most readers probably won’t understand the previous sentence unless they were force fed Meet Me in St. Louis as a child (quite a digression for the first breath of a concert preview, I know) but I can’t help but become immersed in Gentleman Auction House’s world: a melting pot of of influences that  incorporates such diverse musical styles as Americana, dream/baroque pop, freak folk, and dub.

The result is a fully realized and densely layered sound that reveals different attributes after multiple listens.  The band’s set up alone could be considered a collective instead of a cohesive musical mind, comprised as a seven piece that features dueling drums, pianos, and vocalists as well as guitars, bass, trumpets, flutes, and an omnichord (whatever the fuck that is). Their last LP, Alphabet Graveyard, was released in June of last year and has more than its share of complexly melodic gems, including the playfully sexual “Call it Casual,” an anthemically throbbing ode to arson in “The Box of Matches,” and reggae infused groover “New Moon.”

The unparalleled sonic variety in these tracks should be more than enough to promise an enduring live show.  The energetic video for “The Box of Matches” doesn’t hurt either, making it ruefully apparent that these cats have exuberance and wit in spades.  Pittsburgh gets treated yet again to an up and coming national act poised to take their place along side the heavy hitters of the scene, I can’t imagine they would disappoint.

Gentleman Auction House – The Book of Matches

Gentleman Auction House – New Moon

Gentleman Auction House -Call it Casual

Coltrane Motion, however, are careful not to fall in line with Velvet Underground disciples like the Jesus and the Mary Chan and The Magnetic Fields, by pumping up the fucking fun quotient to 11, keeping the bouncy rhythm sections fast, and giving ample space for both the innocent and the haunting to invade their songs. 

This Chicago duo, comprised of Michael Bond on synth and vocal duty and Matt Dennewitz on guitars, have more dancey hooks and rock swagger than they know what to do with.  Their latest 7” single “Maya Blue/The Year Without Summer” boasts two solid documents of their jangle drenched sound that is their first record out put since 2007′s Songs About Music.  “The Year Without Summer” splashes along happily as a wail of guitar drone tips the synth riffs back and forth to sound almost off key, transforming what could be a standard summer anthem into a day spent at the beach after sniffing glue.  “Maya Blue” shuffles along beautifully with cymbals crashing and a quiet tambourine efficiently keeping time.  The wall of guitar noise is still there, but maintains its pitch through the spacey guitar coda that leads the song out in the closing seconds.

Coltrane Motion comes to Pittsburgh’s Club Cafe on Thursday March 12, and should be able to get at least a dozen bodies on the dance floor.  It’s exciting to see a young band stroll into town with with a set of tracks that I wouldn’t mind blasting from my car stereo in June, especially after this Pittsburgh winter doesn’t seem to end quick enough. And even while the cover of their latest single looks like it could have easily been an alternative record sleeve for A Love Supreme, Coltrane Motion make music that is a far cry from cool jazz.  With a sound that illuminates like rich, melancholic sunshine, this Chicago duo sing loud enough for a year without summer to have at least one heatwave.

Coltrane Motion – The Year Without a Summer

Coltrane Motion – Maya Blue

His debut EP The End of All-Purpose simmers with stream of consciousness, rapid-fire lyrics and pulsing guitars not unlike classic Neutral Milk Hotel, allowing every song to exhibit the uneasy qualities of an impending implosion. The music radiates with undertones that are both ironic and sincere, as Otepka elucidates his feelings through surrealist imagery, longing statements of abstraction and details of crumbling relationships that sound strangely euphoric. With a kind of lyrical density that is seldom realized in the annals of indie rock, tracks can quickly switch gears between frantic moments of confusion and slow, unmitigated elegies of disappointment.

What truly pains Otepka is the real question as he cleverly addresses which emotions are significant and which are feigned in the early gem “Movieguns.”  Pairing a rich acoustic strum with jaunty violins, Otepka assures that “these guns are not real guns, they’re movie guns,” forcing the listener wonder what sentiments thereafter are to be trusted.  “Been a Drill” bares striking sonic qualities to Neutral Milk Hotel’s “The King of Carrot Flowers pt. 1″ trading in the flexible organ for jubilant horns across the chorus, but manages to keep up with a fragmented narrative that practically flies out of the speakers.

With “Kind/Brutal” Otekpa begins by listing the things he claims he finds valuable in his significant other, doing this amidst spare, spiraling acoustics, skeptically telling him self “I love her cause she tries everything I try…she don’t mind when I turn on the appliances/and I scream at the top of my lungs.”  Concluding his own reasons for compatibility might barely hold water, Otepka storms into the booming chorus, all fiddles and thunderous drums, while exclaiming “I know I love her!” like he was under oath. “You Win” might be the most haunting of those elegies I mentioned earlier, opening with a dreamy guitar line that wanders into the track like an amnesiac in a fugue state, waiting to be startled from an ominous haze of smoke and fantasy. “You win,” he asserts quietly and without pretense in the first lyrics, admitting defeat with an earnest streak of subtle contempt.

Hopefully, Chris Otepka should find himself among the likes of John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, Jeff Magnum of Neutral Milk Hotel, and Andrew Bird for the sheer literary density of his lyrics and themes.  It’s likely his first full album will bring greater notice to the consistently, top-notch songwriting he exhibited on The End Of All-Purpose, but a string of  fervant live shows should do quite a big to generate momentum. Pittsburgh is luckily treated to his second show in a about a month, playing on Fat Tuesday at The Garfield Artworks, and now playing along side indie folk veterans Clem Snide at Club Cafe on Sunday, March 15 at 6:00 pm.  If anyone reading this review does happen to stop by that show on Sunday night, see if you can catch a glimpse of Otepka’s eyes when he shouts “I know I lover her!” at the apex of  “Kind/Brutal” and tell me if you believe him or not.

The Heligoats – Kind/Brutal

The Heligoats – You Win