12:50-1:45 a.m.
Death Becomes Even The Maiden is not a name for a catchy band. But Eric Greenwood, the bassist and singer of the Capital City trio, is quick to admit that, surprisingly enough, Death Becomes Even The Maiden’s songs are catchy. But to clarify, we’re using the term “catchy” less as a euphemism for “gimmicky” and more as a woefully inadequate placeholder for the word “memorable.” Songs such as these are guaranteed to leave an impression.
For a taste, try the band’s latest recording, the Pink EP, a single in the classic sense: two songs on one seven-inch record. A-side “The Chop” digs deep with a melodic bass line slicing through a fog of synth-chords before the beat drops and the song turns around into its post-punk snarl. Joy Division’s moodiness meets Gang of Four’s staccato vocal delivery. But it’s tempered by blips of Dinosaur Jr feedback in the guitars and becomes something very close to pop. Good thing it’s balanced by its flipside, “The Only Thing I Feel for You is the Recoil,” a frantic guitar-charged gallop bookended by hissing amplifiers. “Sort of a Jekyll and Hyde,” says Greenwood of the EP. With barreling drums and a vocal delivery from Greenwood that starts off urgent and builds its way up to enraged as he scorches his throat through the chorus, “Recoil” is ignition for a mosh pit — but still there’s that hook. Don’t be surprised to find yourself screaming right along.
The band’s influences are clear: post-punk jitters keep the band’s math-rock proclivities from sitting still while The Pixies’ loud-quiet-loud dynamic gets cranked up. But it’s a testament to the trio’s chemistry that the songs can be so simultaneously urgent and approachable. “I almost feel like I need to apologize for being too catchy,” Greenwood says. No apologies necessary. — B. Reed
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| Death Becomes Even The Maiden |
Sunshone Still
9:45-10:30 p.m.
Chris Smith, the lone constant of Sunshone Still, is a hush-voiced storyteller, a tiptoe parade of American frontier mythology. His Ten Cent American Novels, which centers on the life and times of Manifest Destiny-era war hero Kit Carson, is a gentle, wizened slice of Americana. “A Time To Be Womaned” soars on its muted saloon brass and bounding banjo and carries a ragtime feel with the introduction of a Dixieland clarinet in its bridge. It also churns along where other songs — namely the ambling “Klamath Lake” — are content to shuffle along kicking up sepia-toned dust. The record turns its yellowed pages with leather-soft acoustic strums as the distant moan of electric guitar strokes their faces longingly. It’s here, in this ability to create such vivid, if dream-smudged, images, that Sunshone Still commands the rapt attention of its listeners. — B. Reed
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| Sunshone Still |
Free Times, 10/01/08
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