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This weekend I'll be covering the Capitol Hill Block Party for KEXP, so I'm making sure to finish up my other reviews before then. As it happens I've only been to one concert this month (July for some reason is often a slow concert month for me), and I actually didn't take many notes about it.
When I was at the Rendezvous JewelBox Theater for the C'est La Mort / Blue Light Curtain show, I was given a tip that I should attend the following week to see a band being billed as "Megatouch". So the following Saturday, July 2, I was back at the Rendezvous for the mysterious Megatouch, revealed only a few hours beforehand to actually be Sleepy Eyes of Death. Sleepy Eyes of Death announced recently that they would be playing one final show at Neumos on August 26 and then disbanding, so this was a surprise opportunity to catch them up close and personal before they go. Opening for them were Trophy Hunter and Haunted Horses.
Trophy Hunter was a duo, a punk-style shouty-sung vocalist and a guitarist, with a drum machine for beats. They had a touch of the post-punk artiness to them—a bit of Gang of Four, perhaps—and were not bad at all.
Haunted Horses were another duo, this time on guitar and drums with both singing vocals, augmenting their music with some synth and sample-looping. They were further along the dark post-punk vein, with cool synchopated rhythms and jarred angular melodies, and some pretty fierce drumming. They made me think that where punk is about the short sharp shock, post-punk takes the energy and anger of punk and applies it to the complexities of art rock. I liked Haunted Horses quite a bit and will keep an eye out for them.
I was familiar with Sleepy Eyes of Death by name, and knew I'd heard and liked some of their music on KEXP, but couldn't really remember what they were like. So it was a bit of a pleasant surprise to discover they were basically keyboard-led hard-driving prog rock, very much in the style of the late '70s and early '80s (complete with space-y sounding keyboards). They had some vocals sung through a vocoder, but basically played instrumentals. They had a really epic sound, at times heavy enough even for metal but always bringing it back to sweeping soundscapes. I went from being vaguely familiar with them to a big fan, and was sorry to know that this may be my only chance to see them but pleased that at least I did get that opportunity. (Again, their last show will be Friday August 26 at Neumos; tickets are only $10 and apparently still available, so I'd better pick one up myself soon…)
I complained in my last post about the generally poor lighting at the Rendezvous, making it very difficult for me to get any decent photos at shows there. And indeed, my photos of Haunted Horses are barely acceptable and only because I was right by the stage; I managed to get a few somewhat better photos of Trophy Hunter for the same reason. But the big surprise turned out to be Sleepy Eyes of Death—despite or perhaps even because of their heavy use of a smoke machine, I took several photos that turned out quite well, I thought. You can check out the whole set on Flickr, as usual, but I think I'll include one here too.
When I was at the Rendezvous JewelBox Theater for the C'est La Mort / Blue Light Curtain show, I was given a tip that I should attend the following week to see a band being billed as "Megatouch". So the following Saturday, July 2, I was back at the Rendezvous for the mysterious Megatouch, revealed only a few hours beforehand to actually be Sleepy Eyes of Death. Sleepy Eyes of Death announced recently that they would be playing one final show at Neumos on August 26 and then disbanding, so this was a surprise opportunity to catch them up close and personal before they go. Opening for them were Trophy Hunter and Haunted Horses.
Trophy Hunter was a duo, a punk-style shouty-sung vocalist and a guitarist, with a drum machine for beats. They had a touch of the post-punk artiness to them—a bit of Gang of Four, perhaps—and were not bad at all.
Haunted Horses were another duo, this time on guitar and drums with both singing vocals, augmenting their music with some synth and sample-looping. They were further along the dark post-punk vein, with cool synchopated rhythms and jarred angular melodies, and some pretty fierce drumming. They made me think that where punk is about the short sharp shock, post-punk takes the energy and anger of punk and applies it to the complexities of art rock. I liked Haunted Horses quite a bit and will keep an eye out for them.
I was familiar with Sleepy Eyes of Death by name, and knew I'd heard and liked some of their music on KEXP, but couldn't really remember what they were like. So it was a bit of a pleasant surprise to discover they were basically keyboard-led hard-driving prog rock, very much in the style of the late '70s and early '80s (complete with space-y sounding keyboards). They had some vocals sung through a vocoder, but basically played instrumentals. They had a really epic sound, at times heavy enough even for metal but always bringing it back to sweeping soundscapes. I went from being vaguely familiar with them to a big fan, and was sorry to know that this may be my only chance to see them but pleased that at least I did get that opportunity. (Again, their last show will be Friday August 26 at Neumos; tickets are only $10 and apparently still available, so I'd better pick one up myself soon…)
I complained in my last post about the generally poor lighting at the Rendezvous, making it very difficult for me to get any decent photos at shows there. And indeed, my photos of Haunted Horses are barely acceptable and only because I was right by the stage; I managed to get a few somewhat better photos of Trophy Hunter for the same reason. But the big surprise turned out to be Sleepy Eyes of Death—despite or perhaps even because of their heavy use of a smoke machine, I took several photos that turned out quite well, I thought. You can check out the whole set on Flickr, as usual, but I think I'll include one here too.
