Around the coldest January corner in Williamsburg nests Glasslands, a barn full of glitter and darkwave music. On January 26th, 2010,  local arts impresario Todd Pendu brought DJs from Chicago and two local bands, Omega Jarden and Mirror Mirror, to Glasslands.

On this evening, the stage at Glasslands looked like the underside of a prom dress, or like a snug womb, depending on your life outlook. Ladies with cokebottle glasses boogied and waify boys sashayed across basslines played by DJ Harrison as the party warmed up.

More on Mirror Mirror & Omega Jardens @ Glasslands | 1.26.10

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JezebelMusic.com @ Glasslands
January 6, 2010 | The Babies, True Womanhood, Total Slacker, Beach Fossils, Sundelles

[All images copyright 2010 Rachel Oakes]

Last Wednesday, an adorable swarm of stripey-teed, bespectacled Williamsburgers filed in to Glasslands for bands whose very monikers spoke volumes to the nature of the crowd: Total Slacker, The Babies, and perhaps a bit more far-fetched, True Womanhood. Although the main event was The Babies, (comprised of members from Vivian Girls and Woods), I thought True Womanhood had considerable novelty appeal and definitely won Miss Congeniality for the night. Thomas Redmond, Melissa Beattie, and Noam Elsner’s melodic doomsday drones brought out the vampire in all of us, and by the end of their set, even the bartender was rocking out.

Utilizing maudlin drum loops, beer-soaked, distorted basslines, and Doug Martsch-inspired vocals, the trio of psych rockers filled the space with a palpably hypnotic echo. The sound is a product of organic songwriting, never taking the obvious route back to a hook, barraging the ear with a pattern of recognizable basslines, and then shying away. Luckily for us, this gave way to the under-indulged timpani, whose deep and kettled voice brought new life to the roll of the kick drum in experimental indie rock. Elsner’s drumming is a sight to behold, as is Beattie’s childlike, Duff McKagan attitude toward her bass. The songs could have been tighter, but the kernel of a great structure was there, and at Glasslands, who’s counting?

by Drew Citron

Check out more shots of the show after the jump!
More on The Babies, True Womanhood, Total Slacker, Beach Fossils, Sundelles @ Glasslands | 1.06.10

THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

TUES, JAN 12

Led Er Est, Light Asylum
Glasslands
9:00 PM, $7, 21+
Todd Pendu’s throwing a new Tuesday Nite Disco party at Glasslands, but it’s not so much disco as “dark-electro-synth-pop.” If this lineup is any indication, these parties are going to be pretty cool. Both bands are super synthy, but Led Er Est is colder, darker, more elemental (more weird?) whereas Light Asylum plays more throwback romantic synth pop.

WED, JAN 13

The Drums, Surfer Blood, The Depreciation Guild
Bowery Ballroom
7:30 PM, $12a/$15d, 18+
Okay, another post about the weather. I’ve been thinking of this show as something like Wii surfing or like… O’Doul’s for summer? You sure won’t be capturing the real thing, but the feeling’s there. Total beach party.
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True Womanhood - “The Monk”

It seems that when we listed the reasons we wanted to go to the Babies/Beach Fossils/Sundelles show at Glasslands this Wednesday we forgot a pretty good one: DC’s True Womanhood. We just received this track that will appear on their soon-to-be released debut EP, Basement Membranes - which they recorded at Brooklyn’s own Death By Audio!

People often compare True Womanhood to Radiohead, (probably because of their overriding melancholy and Thom Yorke-ish vocals) but we think that’s simplifying it a little, and the members of True Womanhood say themselves that they’d rather be aligned with contemporaries like Beach House. We’ll go for that comparison, but after listening to more of True Womanhood’s songs like “Magic Child,” we think that they’ve got a potential for aggression you won’t find in Beach House…and we like it! (Besides, we already know not to mess with anyone who wields a sledgehammer while wearing flip-flops.)

Check out True Womanhood at Glasslands this Wednesday, January 6, with Babies, Total Slacker, Beach Fossils and The Sundelles.

by Erin Sheehy

THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

Hey…so we’ve been out of the show listing game for the past two weeks, partly because there just haven’t been too many shows going on due to the holidays, but mostly because the editors have been out of town, assessing our life goals and watching old movies in bed. Anyway, it’s a new year, so time to get back in it:

TUES, JAN. 5

Real Estate, Babies
Brooklyn Bowl
8:00 PM, FREE, 21+
I think our reviewer Kyle McGovern described the evocations of Real Estate better than I can. He said they call to mind “the kinds of scorched summers that seem tedious while they’re happening and glorious when they’re not.” I know I talk about the weather a hell of a lot on this, a music blog, but man, when the heat’s out (again) and you’re duct-taping your windows shut, sometimes sunshiney music is exactly what you need to remind you that it won’t be long till you’re once again dropping ice cubes down your shirt and sticking to the subway seats. Do all the imagining you can at this free show on Tuesday.

WEDS, JAN. 6

Babies, Total Slacker, Beach Fossils, True Womanhood, The Sundelles
Glasslands
7:30 PM, $7, 21+
Ever since we found out that Kevin from Woods and Cassie from Vivian Girls were getting together to make Babies, we were like, “Yeah, let’s cover that, man, that’s gonna be the hot new shit.” But we’ve yet to see them, so one of our New Years resolutions is to get on it – might as well plan to see them twice in one week in case we flake out again. Votes for Glasslands versus Brooklyn Bowl? Well, Max, the more sophisticated JM.com editor (if you ignore his taste in beer) truly loves him some Beach Fossils, and Erin, the editor with the more impressive collection of go-go boots, is a big proponent of The Sundelles.
More on This Week In Shows

LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ Glasslands
December 10, 2009 | Ana Lola Roman, Behavior, Perpetual Mvmt <> Snd
The night at Glasslands was off to a slow start. For a long time, it was impossible to tell whether it had started at all. Perpetual Mvmt <> Snd, a performance group from Philadelphia, toed the line between art and accident in a kinetically monotonous, tepid act. A man played a large clarinet-like instrument that sounded like a car backfiring with a kitten wedged in the exhaust pipe, and was joined by a cellist doing a convincing imitation of fingernails on chalkboard. As one man rustled paper into a microphone, two women made halting movements toward the center of the stage, cruelly teasing the audience into expecting something to happen. Then, as would continue between all movement sequences, a seated non-performer hissed “stop” and the beep of a stopwatch resetting was heard, the girls returning to their seats amid farting noises from the not-quite-clarinet and generically ominous sonic atmospheres emanating from a laptop controlled by another performer.

There was a briefly entertaining zoological moment as one girl started flapping her arms in the birdlike fashion of five-year-old kids playing Pretend and the other prowled the stage like a lioness. The primate camp was represented by the formerly paper-rustling man, who squatted purposefully at various key junctures as if relieving himself.

The paper-rustler repeatedly presented what appeared to be his interpretation of an open mic night—tapping the microphone, clearing his throat, clapping abortively—a non-indictment perhaps even less interesting than his concentrated bouts of mimed shit-taking. Everyone periodically referred to papers under their chair, all business in between spasms of bunny-hopping and ticking noises. One girl turned around and began flapping enthusiastically again, revealing an unintentionally hilarious tramp stamp. End. Naming one’s group Perpetual Mvt <> Snd and displaying as little as possible of either movement or sound may be high concept and ironic, but it makes for a very dull show.
More on Ana Lola Roman, Behavior, Perpetual Mvmt <> Snd @ Glasslands | 12.10.09

THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

WEDS, DEC. 2

Jaguar Love, The King Left, Yes Giantess, Violent Soho
Mercury Lounge
8:00 PM, $10 adv/$12 do, 21+
People have said that Johnny Whitney of Jaguar Love sounds like “Robert Plant on steroids.” I was gonna say he sort of reminds me of Jay Reatard in a higher register. Either way, we’re talking shrieky, jolting energy. These guys make some catchy, noisy, uptempo pop with y’know, canned beats. Enjoy!

Werewolves, Strange Rivals, Heliotropes
Glasslands
8:00, $5, 21+
Never underestimate the power of the keys to take something dramatic and make it cinematic. I’m using the term “cinematic” very liberally to mean that you might find yourself playing out long scenes in your head while listening to Werewolves. Or maybe it’s their sneering vocals that do it, I don’t know yet. What I do know is that they’re dynamic performers and they’re playing Glasslands this Wedsnesday…

SAT, DEC. 5

Bowerbirds
Union Pool
8:00, $10, 21+
Did you know that the male bowerbird hops around with a flower in his beak in an attempt to woo a mate? How sweet! On the other hand, the male angler fish sniffs out the female, bites her, releases an enzyme that fuses the two at the blood-vessel level, and then atrophies until he is no more than a pair of parasitic gonads. The world is ugly, but if you want to linger on the more poignant aspects of life, why not get all acoustic and snuggly with Bowerbirds for the night? They’re also playing Bowery Ballroom with Elvis Perkins on Thursday, but I like to promote the more intimate, boozier, cheaper shows…

Or you can just head towards Kent Ave. and then decide…
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LIVE JOURNAL
JezebelMusic.com @ Glasslands
November 13, 2009 | Oneohtrix Point Never, Northampton Wools, No Fun Acid

I began to contemplate the limits of the electric guitar as I watched Thurston Moore and Bill Nace’s dual-guitar harsh noise project Northampton Wools on Friday at the Glasslands in Williamsburg. It’s an analog device, after all, and despite generations of innovative pedal supplements, the basic concept has gone largely unchanged since the days of Bo Diddley. How could such a fossil measure up against the infinite possibilities offered by the digital?

What got me thinking in this direction was that this was the record release show for Rifts, the second full length album from Daniel Lopatin’s post-techno project Oneohtrix Point Never. I’ve seen his music described as post-techno or ambient house, but it seemed to me closest to a gentle and unchallenging ambient music from his Myspace tracks. In comparison, Moore and Nace looked like cavemen trying to make fire as they banged metal implements on the guitars resting face up on their laps, producing often dumb-sounding landscapes within an insectoid undulating primordial chaos. It was messy, it was uncomfortable, but it was a familiar terrain of chaos and reprieve that they seemed so calm and content to navigate as they used every part of the instrument like it were a deer carcass.
More on Oneohtrix Point Never, Northampton Wools, No Fun Acid @ Glasslands | 11.13.09