Thee Oh Sees, Yellow Fever and the Bare Wires at the Independent

I went and saw Thee Oh Sees, Yellow Fever, and Bare Wires play at the Independent on August 7, 2010.
I was excited to see Yellow Fever, whose debut last year has stayed in heavy rotation on my stereo.

Bare Wires from Oakland opened up. I know nothing about them, except that they are from Oakland, are named after a John Mayall album, have a lead singer who looks like Wierd Al, a bassist that looks like Joey Ramone, and sound like the Sweet meet the Kinks. Here they are playing at SXSW this year.


Yellow Fever were good, but a little mellow for the crowd. It was a woman with a Buddy Holly look on guitar and vocals, and a guy who looks like my friend Chad on drums and keyboards. Dude was multitasking.

The highlight was the Oh Sees. I don't know anything about them, either. Evidently their singer, John Dwyer, is an SF garage punk legend, having been in the Coachwhips.

Their sound is a mix of rockabilly, punk, and garage rock, distilled like a fine bourbon into the purest essence. They were ROCKING. It was probably the most rock n roll experience I've had in a while. Dwyer played his guitar like it was trying to escape from him, the drummer pounded away on his drums, and the bassist (petey dammit) banged his head like a possessed mod. So, so good. HIPSTERS DANCED. For real.


I think his wikipedia entry says the difference between the Oh Sees and Coachwhips is less drugs. Goddamn.



Anyways, I was really into the show, even if I did leave before midnight.

Antlers/Phantogram Review

I saw the Antlers with Phantogram last Saturday. It sort of confirmed that I'm not a huge Antlers fan, although I thought they were good live. Chatty-ass crowd. I wrote a review of it at Blogcritics, here, In
what I hope will be a return to regular writing for that site and RapReviews.

Here's an NPR video of them playing live at the Black Cat in DC.