This Friday in Seattle, one of those magical weekend nights that could only happen in the summer when inhibitions are at an all time low will unfold into a perfect night of stellar rock'n'roll. The Lamps, Cheap Time and Haunted George are making their way down the West Coast this weekend and next stopping in Portland, San Fransisco and San Diego, but in Seattle, the city of weeping skies, they meet up with The A-Frames resulting in a bill even your mother could love.
The one-man band act, Haunted George has certainly dug up his own sound that spins off with an eerie, stumbling echo that waltzes in a breath of fresh gritty desert air. There's no doubt this former Necessary Evil, Steve Pallow has been affected by his move to the Mojave Desert. Releasing two excellent records and a couple of stinging singles over the past couple of years, he has certainly carved out his own corner in rock'n'roll. His sophomore effort released on Deadbeat Records last year rings with a doggerel atmosphere, a recording value that rivals an old beaten transistor, and a mood where getting your soul sucked out of your eye sockets by a roadkill coyote under the spell of a poltergeist might be a good time. Using such trickery as old samples from horror reels as segues between his delightfully demented desert ditties, lyrics that are as weird as they are witty, and an echo-riddled lo-fi recording style used as an instrument itself, it seems like he has a good grasp on own his unique style and knows it. Look for his third full-length “Pile O' Meat,” which is out now on Hook Or Crook Records
Alongside an act like Haunted George, Cheap Time is likely to give you some sort of aural whiplash, and that's a good thing. Their snotty pop-drenched songs land on the same playing field as the likes of Red Cross, but where the former has carved out a classic form that legions of bands have filled since, Cheap Time bang out the corners to make their own mold that sets them apart from the rest. With a debut due out on In The Red in their future, you can bet we'll be hearing more from them.
Their new labelmates on In The Red, The Lamps are also making an appearance supporting the like-sounding A-Frames. The Lamps fulfill the same angular and muddy pop march to doomsday under the same sonic guise as The Intelligence (also on In The Red). And as the Glue Wave rings around this crumbling planet the evidence of its adhesion to the collection of drooling android fanatics are set poised to lap up what is obviously at this stage the next new (or newish) wave. Like so many of their peers, The Lamps have an uncanny ability to mesh the mechanical rhythms that could come from a tattered factory in such a refreshingly different angle than The Stooges claimed decades earlier with a pop hammer that is proving more and more to be formula for success.
Headlining the show, The A-Frames lined the playing field of mechanized and modular sound during the dawn of the new century. Smashing the sounds of their predecessors like synthpunk heroes, The Screamers into Devo, these guys are responsible for setting the context to where this Glue Wave stuff makes sense in this modern world of dark, foreboding and consuming sense of crumbling liberties. Although their music isn't the most uplifting, it's negativity and simple execution easily shows why it falls in line with the times.
Here's a new video from The Lamps for their song "20 Inches of Monkey"
