Fresh off a 35-city US tour, the Midnight Creeps make their triumphant return
to Providence on Saturday (the 21st) at the Met Café for a very special
holiday gig. The festivities will center around the release of their new album,
Doomed From the Get Go. In anticipation of the sleazy sweat-core fest, I
thought it might be cool to provide you with a sneaky peek at some of the songs
that are bound to be on the set list that lusty night.
Midnight Creeps: Doomed from the Get Go (Rodent Popsicle)
If you haven't seen 'em, the Creeps combine the kind of primitive riffage
you'd hear on early hardcore records by the Damned and the Sex Pistols, and
feature the over-the-top slutty sensuality of the Cramps. Vocalist Jenny
Hurricane leads the way with an utterly lascivious performance, spewing out
insanely horny and venomous lyrics whilst slithering around onstage like a
cobra in heat, like Iggy Pop with the Stooges doing "I Wanna Be Your Dog,"
maybe. She might not like this analogy, but her intonation recalls a post-'80s
Axl Rose. "I got my ice pick! I got my lipstick! Got my hatchet! Got my
fishnet!" she sings on the chugging "Mugshot," as if to insinuate that this
woman's got pretty much all she needs. "Oh Joe you went and shot it up / Oh,
Joe now you can't get it up!" she bellows like Wendy O. Williams on "It Ain't
Trash Joe," a wincing punk explosion that'll plaster you to the back wall of
the club. Her fellow Creeps is Heather Mars, a Poison Ivy-style riff queen who
doesn't screw around when it comes to playing straight-up punk chords and
single-note motifs. The best thing about Heather's axe-wielding is that, like
the best punk guitarists, she understands her limitations and never tries to
overextend. And there's testosterone in the rhythm section, with Jonas on bass
and Jeff on drums. Both go unnoticed but for their muscle and metronomic
timekeeping, which is a good thing on a record like this.
Doomed from the Get Go deftly captures the intensity and tension of the
Creeps' live show, as it steamrolls through a non-stop set of dark, sexy,
black-and-white-styled energy. And while it sounds good on its own, there's
nothing quite like having the visual to accompany the soundtrack, which is
exactly why you should get your ass to the Met on Saturday for the show. If you
like your punk rock with a thick coating of sleaze, well, there are few better
places to be than watching the Midnight Creeps in the rotting flesh.
The Jonnie Earthquake Band, the Sleazies, USM, No
Regard, and the Numbskulls will also perform at the Met. Admission is
$5.
Mr. Slugg and the Legion of Doom: Paramecium Circus
They're ba-ack! And each time they return they sound twice as good as the time
before. This is good news for local goth fans,'cuz on the new Paramecium
Circus, Mr. Slugg and his fun bunch is beginning to sound like they're
ready for a national audience. Sure, it's still buried deep in night-black
electronic goth-pop, heavily synth-based with eerie, surrealistic vocals. But
the songs are more sophisticated this time out, with abundant melody, better
hooks, and thoughtful arrangements. Where their last album and all music
previous to this was antiquated in a charming way -- stuck in a big puddle of
mud -- Paramecium Circus finds the band moving forward for the first
time. With the big drum sound, vocal loops, and Slugg's awesome distorted
guitars, it seems like the group turned on the radio, actually heard today's
music, and found something they liked. It's one thing to be faithful to your
roots, but it's another thing altogether to be your roots. On
Paramecium Circus, Mr. Slugg and the Legion of Doom have moved away from
the latter and inched ever closer to a relevant future.
The Velvet Crush: Soft Sounds (Action Musik)
Velvet Crush's first album since 1999's excellent Free Expression is a
bit of a departure for the band. Now whittled down to the duo of Paul Chastain
and Ric Menck, Velvet Crush is but a shadow of what it once was: a regal
embodiment of great electric pop. But Soft Sounds adds a nice, albeit
mature (!) dimension to the Crush canon. Chastain wrote most of the tunes this
time out, recorded a lot of the stuff on his own in his South County music
room, and added a few bits at Matthew Sweet's LA homestead. Apparently,
Chastain had intended to release the album as a solo project, but drummer
Menck, who himself had locked onto the idea of doing a soft-rock album,
convinced his longtime mate to release it as a proper Velvet Crush disc.
Among the 12 songs here, three are covers, including Scott Walker's "Duchess,"
the Box Tops' "Rollin' In My Sleep," and the Fleetwood Mac tune "Save Me a
Place." On the latter, original Crusher Jeffrey Underhill contributes some
sweetly fuzzed-out guitar. As you'd expect from anything with the Velvet Crush
imprimatur, there's some really special stuff here. The Nick Drake-inspired "In
Your Time," the hushed, Astrud Gilberto-esque "Party Line (Samba)," and the
closing piano-guitar-feedback melody "Late In the Day" are excellent additions
to this Velvet oeuvre. One wonders if the band will be happy to simply fade
away after these quiet grooves vanish into the ether.
WANDERING EYE. Transparent has been turning up the heat on their
career lately, booking shows and staying busy. They're going to be featured on
the upcoming Rye Airfield compilation. The airfield (www.ryeairfield.com) is a
huge skate park/BMX track in New Hampshire and there will be a lot of other hip
bands on it. If you want to catch 'em in the act, they have two local shows
this week. The first is tonight (Thursday the 19th) at the Met with Sea Monkey
Stew and Premonition. It's 18-plus, doors at 8, $5. They also play on Saturday
the New Wave Café in New Bedford, with C60 and Tong Po. It's also
18-plus and a 3 to 6 p.m. matinee to boot.
Good news in the Marlowes camp. According to John Larson, they've inked
a distribution deal in Spain. The band has reached an agreement with PopMadrid
to be the exclusive distributor in Spain of their new album Sugarbursts and
Thunderbolts, as well as their previous release, Nuclear Suitcase.
Both albums are on the band's Shiny Fly label. Since signing the deal, they've
seen increased airplay and press coverage in Spain and are working on the
possibility of a tour next summer. This is not because they're lucky, it's
because they're semi-legendary "power-poppers" across Europe and it's just now
starting to pay dividends. Bueno suerte! (?)
Ryan from Involuntary Productions (involuntaryproductions.com) writes in that
90.3 WRIU, NiceKidNice.com, and UndergroundHipHop.com are teaming up on
Saturday night to bring the Boston hip-hop supergroup the
Perceptionists, featuring Mr. Lif, Akrobatik, DJ Fakts 1, and DJ Sense, to
Providence for a year-end hip-hop bash of massive proportions. Other performers
include Boston's Electric Company, and local faves Birthwrite, Prospect
Heights, Cas Uno, Jezuz, Vocab, GhosTown, Ams Uno, Hybrid H, Linguistic, and
more. DJs Joe Wonk and Gem will provide interludes. The show is at the Living
Room, starts at 6 p.m., and will go until 1 a.m. Tix are $15 and available
online now.
Based in New Haven, Tarmak is a five-piece live downtempo/drum-n-bass
band with two female singers. There are mp3s on the band's website
(tarmak.net). They will be playing on Saturday night at AS220 with Tom
Driscoll, Marissa Nadler, and Casey Holford. The show is at 9 p.m. and costs
$6.
You can send me your music news big.daddy1@cox.net.
Issue Date: December 20 - 26, 2002
