Weekend Warriors: Disguised as Birds Tear it Up This Sunday

 

photo of Disguised as Birds courtesy of MySpace

Diguised as Birds‘ latest release, the New Demons EP, is a total thrasher, but the local quartet doesn’t solely relegate their rocking dirges to studio sessions. They easily put on one of the most intense rock performances in Milwaukee. Their pairing up with Oklahomans Traindodge for a show at the Cactus Club this Sunday makes a good case that the weekend does not have to go out with a whimper.

Disguised as Birds open for Traindodge at Cactus Club (2496 S. Wentworth) on Sunday, October 12th. Also playing: Sleepcomesdown and Roma 79. 10 p.m. 21+

Disguised as Birds, “Just Can’t Hold”

The Saltshakers Turn The Lights Out

Saturday marks the release of The Saltshakers third album, Lights Out, and to celebrate they’ll be headlining a show at The BBC with The Nice Outfit and Elusive Parallelograms. Churning out riff-heavy power pop in the same vein as Superdrag and Weezer, The Saltshakers have gone through some lineup changes since their 2007 release, Up All Night. In anticipation of Saturday’s show, lead singer Chad Curtis took time to talk with Fanbelt about the band’s changes and his passionate pursuit of the perfect 3-minute song.

Read the interview after the jump…

Lisa Gatewood: Recording Spontaneity

image courtesy of Lisa Gatewood

Words by Erin Wolf

Folk music oftentimes has the ideals of conventionalism attached to it — its simplistic, storytelling qualities and stripped down instrumentation paints its music with clean, broad strokes. How, then, does a self-dubbed folk singer make their songs stand out and sparkle? Local artist Lisa Gatewood knows that a natural sparkle lies in the ingenuity and spontaneity of the live performance. With that in mind, she’s taking to the stage at Linneman’s Riverwest Inn on Saturday to record her second album in a show setting. She explains it as this: “I have been working on these songs for a long time, some of them even before the first album…we [will] try to capture something quite elusive…the thing with a live album is that so much of it depends on the energy of the audience. And there is no sincerer energy that I can think of than that of friends.”

Lisa Gatewood, “The Black Coat Song”

Lisa Gatewood, “Better Than” [reprise]

Do yourself a favor and go see Wizard of Cause @ Cactus Club tonight

J. Todd’s take on grungy noise-rock kills it. Here’s an interview I did with J. Todd; it was for a different publication, but they edited out a bunch of the best stuff. Before his show with Lookbook, Daylight Robbery and Johnny Prophylactic, I encourage you to read it in full. So, here it is …

Sneak preview: The Alternate Reality of … House of M

The good folks at Uni-Fi Records sent us a sneak leak from the new House of M LP, The Alternate Reality of …. HoM is throwing a CD release party 10 p.m. Saturday at Mad Planet with Fresh Cut Collective and Kid Millions. I heard the full version, and can safely say it’s a definite top-10 contender this year. Hopefully, HoM will make available a couple more tracks for download after the release party. Stay tuned!