THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

Our top picks. Sorry it’s a little Saturday-heavy this week.

THURS, JAN. 21

Darlings, Lonnie Walker, Motel Motel, Gunfight
Union Pool
9:00 PM, TBA, 21+
When I think garage pop in 2010, I immediately think drunk and rowdy, but Darlings are sweet; their songs remind me of early sixties California beachy stuff, except they sing about eviction and TV. Darlings also stand out from other summertimey garage out of Brooklyn because they eschew that veil of fuzz that everyone’s been wearing. Don’t crap out yet if you think they sound too saccharine for you – Darlings let themselves get hoarse-voiced and even a little angry with songs like “If This Is Love,” and the contrast is fun.

SAT, JAN. 23

viBe Songmakers, Christy & Emily, DJ Marcelle & Kid Millions, Pterodactyl
ISSUE Project Room
8:30 PM, $15, ALL AGES
ISSUE Project Room has an awesome program where Brooklyn teenagers learn the skills they need to become successful musicians. Only four to six girls are accepted each year, and Christy & Emily are mentoring this program’s group of girls. They take music lessons, business classes, and video editing courses, besides of course writing and recording their own music, which they’ll be performing. And man, they’re performing alongside quite the lineup!
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THIS WEEK IN SHOWS

TUES, OCT. 27

Talk Normal, Pterodactyl, Antimagic
Cake Shop
8:00 PM, $8, 21+
Well I had a great time interviewing Talk Normal, and our writer Helen Buyniski claims their live set is awesome, but I’ve yet to see them perform, so I figure no better time than their Sugarland record release party! Visually they’re interesting: drummer Andrya Ambro uses all sorts of unusual objects to augment her percussion, and apparently this noise duo really works a show into a hypnotic drive. Plus, with Pterodactyl opening, it’s bound to be an intense party!

FRI, OCT. 30

Pissed Jeans, Awesome Color, Drunkdriver, Sleepies
(le) poisson rouge
6:00 PM, $5, all ages
Ye be warned! This is a NYU-sponsored show. But I, for one, don’t care, really. I’m mostly just impressed that NYU is going so hard. It seems very much in the Halloween spirit to go out and get bludgeoned by sound, and lord knows Pissed Jeans and Awesome Color know how to ravage a space with noise. To be honest, the psychedelic sounds of Awesome Color are a bit more my style than Pissed Jeans, plus I already know that I love their live show. (I was blown away by their set at Market Hotel this summer.) And on another note, after learning so much about Sleepies last week, I feel like I should see them in action, too.

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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT NYC

Brooklyn noise duo Talk Normal may be a minimalist band, but they sure have a lot going on. Though certainly drawing on No Wave influences, drummer Andrya Ambro and guitarist Sarah Register are hard to pin down, shouldering against boundaries and weaving a variety of other musical strands into their dense bundle of steel wool sound. The duo, known for their exciting, intense live shows, is playing WFMU Fest with Teenage Jesus and The Jerks this week. We caught up with Talk Normal to chat about their upcoming tour and their new album, Sugarland, which drops on October 27.

JM.com: Well first off, how did you two meet?

Talk Normal: We met in college…different programs that shared similar classes, and we ended up working in the same department (music technology) at school as well.

JM.com: You were in another band together, Antonius Block, right? How does Talk Normal differ from that first band?

Andrya: The structural components between Antonius and Talk Normal seem very different; whereas there was four of us in Antonius, all doing separate things, Talk Normal blurs the lines of “who does what” much more, which opens up new ways for orchestration & arrangement for us. Common themes definitely include a “discordant” & “minimal

JM.com: You have your first full-length coming out at the end of October right? What can we expect – how does it build upon [your EP] Secret Cog?

TN: Yes, October 27!  Record release party that night in NYC at Cakeshop.

JM.com: Yeah, you’re playing with Pterodactyl that night, right?

Sarah: Sugarland represents material spanning a broad time frame, including a few songs that were pre-Secret Cog. But the majority of it is more recent, from the past year-ish, that we’ve been performing live. Also it’s the most representative recording of what we sound like live, which is very satisfying to us. For these reasons and many more, we are extremely pleased to be unleashing it – finally! Nicolas Verhnes, who we recorded and mixed with at Rare Book Room, was key in helping us translate the sounds we make into the recordings we wanted to hear. And yes, we are beyond psyched to be playing with our buddies Antimagic & Pterodactyl, with the additional sparkling company of DJ Mike Wolf.
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