Bands performing here this week. Listen at
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IMPERIAL CHINA “Phosphenes”
A band of few words
Kindred spirits: Battles, Mission of Burma, Fugazi Show:With Grimace Federation, the State Department and Peanut Butter & Dave at on Friday at the Rock & Roll Hotel. Show starts at 9 p.m. 202-388-7625.
www.rockandrollhoteldc. com. $10.
Beginning with inexorable drumbeats and guitar-chord crunches, Imperial China’s new release, “Phosphenes,” immediately establishes that this D.C. trio plays visceral hard rock. But the album is college-educated hard rock, as the song
BRAVE COMBO “Kikiriki”
Kindred spirits: Flaco Jiménez, Lenny Gomulka, the Klezmatics, Geno Delafose Show: Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. at Blob’s Park. 410-799-7130. www.blobspark. net. $20.
Can Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony be distilled into a three-minute hop-and-spin polka suitable for boozy couples at the local dancehall? Yes it can. Can the Bee Gees’ brooding 1967 hit single “Holiday” be juiced up for a fast polka with barking vocals? No problem. Can “Satellite Polka,” a standard among East Coast Polish polka bands, be redone as a synth-swathed electronica dance track? You betcha. All of these
miraculous transformations can be heard on “Kikiriki,” the new album from Brave Combo, a Texas
band of former rock-and-roll and jazz musicians whose love for polka music is as genuine as it is irreverent. The group won the 1999 Grammy for Best Polka Album, despite including a polka arrangement of Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” on the winning disc, “Polkasonic.” The band won because it excels at the basic requirements for any polka band: irresistibly danceable and unfailingly joyful. “Kikiriki,” Brave Combo’s 31st album,
meets those requirements again and adds one surprise after another. Accordionist Carl Finch plays the “Polish National Anthem” as a duet with a Texas thunderstorm. Saxophonist Jeffrey Barnes and trumpeter Danny O’Brien turn Frankie Yankovic’s 1948 hit “Just Because” inside out with hot solos worthy of the Count Basie Orchestra. The album’s title track is actually “The Peanut Polka” redone as a minor-key Balkan, and it’s still danceable and joyful.
— Geoffrey Himes GREG SZETO For Imperial China (from left, Brian Porter, Matt Johnson and Patrick Gough) lyrics are secondary on “Phosphenes.”
titles indicate. The opening track, “All That Is Solid,” takes its name from Marx and Engels, and “Phosphenes” are those glimmers of light you sometimes see when your eyes are closed. Words aren’t central to this music, though. The vocals are usually buried in the mix, and large swathes of the album proceed without any at all, suggesting the music of primarily instrumental art-punk
MAPS & ATLASES “Perch Patchwork”
Kindred spirits: Animal Collective, the Beach Boys, Dirty Projectors Show:With Cults and Laura Stevenson & the Cans on Sunday at the Black Cat. Show starts at 9 p.m. 202-667-7960.
www.blackcatdc.com. $12.
On Maps & Atlases’ first full-length release, “Perch Patchwork,” the Chicago quartet charts a whole new domain. The album retains the group’s baroque instrumental interplay but is keyed to the human voice. That entails a bigger role for Dave Davison’s distinctively throaty baritone but also for expanded vocal counterpoint. The album reveals a world of influences, but its wellspring is the psychedelic-era Beach Boys. That inspiration is filtered through a lot of recent indie-pop outfits, notably Animal Collective. It’s even possible that Davison and his cohorts haven’t closely studied the likes of “Good Vibrations.” Still, sunny melodies and layered harmonies flourish amid the looping guitar lines of “Is” and the drum-circle beats of “The Charm.” Tunes such as “Banished Be Cavalier” are sufficiently airy to evoke the moment when surf music upgraded from “ba-ba-bas” to intricate chorales. A few of these songs are overly
derivative or inadequately developed. “Pigeon” sounds too much like Vampire Weekend, which means it sounds like Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” and the title track’s violin flourishes can’t mask its repetitiveness. But if “Perch Patchwork” isn’t the product of a band that has it all figured out, the album stretches the group’s style appealingly and at no cost to the instrumental dexterity of its earlier work.
— Mark Jenkins
bands such as Battles. Like those groups, Imperial China retains mainstream rock’s punch while incorporating elements of more experimental styles. The trio undergirds its attack with loops and other synthetic sounds, and borrows from non-Western forms, notably for the gamelan-like percussion of “Corrupting the Integrity of the Grid.” The band does chill out occasionally, as
MEMORYHOUSE “The Years”
Kindred spirits: Toro Y Moi, Beach House Show:With Twin Sister on Friday at Iota. Doors
open at 9 p.m. 703-522-8340. www.
iotaclubandcafe.com. $10.
If you owned a nightclub inside a cloud,
Memoryhouse would be your resident band. The Ontario-based duo’s pillowy production and soft vocals give the songs on its debut EP, “The Years,” a friendly glow that makes the listener feel weightless.
Despite its softness and brevity (the EP runs a scant 12 minutes over four tracks), “The Years” still manages to make an impression. The band’s shimmering pop melodies rise beneath the haze, elevating the endeavor to more
than just moody ambiance. Out of the fog, singer Denise Nouvion’s
enigmatic voice rises to the surface. Her vocals can be described with a wide variety of contradictory adjectives: They’re soothing yet nasal, detached yet tender. Nouvion generally seems too blissed out to really emote but also sincere enough to avoid appearing aloof. Memoryhouse’s echoing arrangements
often evoke a feeling of calm wistfulness conducive to nostalgic ruminations. When you listen to “Lately (Deuxieme),” it’s easy to imagine sifting through faded family photographs and boxes of dusty mementos. Memoryhouse’s sound — reverb- drenched guitars, drum machines and airy synths — firmly plants the band in the newfangled “chillwave” genre. But all notions of trendiness aside, this first release holds tons of promise and whets the appetite for a full-length record.
— Dan Miller
during the first part of “Go Where Airplanes Go.” But such downshifts only accentuate the vigor of most of the album, which includes moments that recall hardcore punk’s shout-it-out ferocity. The chant of “we are phosphenes” in “Invincible” is not exactly “we will rock you,” but Imperial China gives it just as much power.
— Mark Jenkins
LOU BARLOW “Sentridoh III”
Kindred spirits: Elliott Smith, Dean Wareham, Robert Pollard Show:Wednesday at the Rock and Roll Hotel. Show starts at 8:30 p.m. 202-388-7625. www.
rockandrollhoteldc.com. $12 in advance; $14 day of show.
“Sentridoh III,” an eight-song digital EP
that toggles between psychedelic, thrashy and reflective rock, is little more than a footnote in the massive catalogue that indie icon Lou Barlow has amassed in his 25-year career. But it makes sense that he would want to document this specific moment. As he has shuffled from proto-grunge sideman to lo-fi pioneer to in- consolable sad sack, Barlow is in the midst of a fruitful run. The 44-year-old has spent much of the past five years playing bass for Dinosaur Jr., his reunited ’80s band that has reestablished itself as one of today’s most vital acts on the strength of two shockingly good new albums and a ferocious live show. Barlow has also stayed active on his own, and “Sentridoh III” catches him as trio leader, a songwriter who remains sharp and offers refreshing updates to past work. The track “Apologize” — besides summing up Barlow’s main lyrical theme in a single word — features swirling guitars that, along with slow-burning tearjerker “Praise,” adds trippiness to Barlow’s oeuvre. “Faith Defies the Night” serves up Dinosaur Jr.-worthy sludge, and “Losercore” takes Barlow’s ragged, acoustic 1992 single and reinvents it as a punk stomper. Compared with some of the classics that Barlow has appeared on, it’s impossible to label “Sentridoh III” as essential, but it is a reminder that he remains a relevant figure in the genre he helped define. —David Malitz
NewMusic
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THE WASHINGTON POST • FRIDAY, AUGUST 13, 2010
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