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  • From: "Jenks Miller" <nightlightbooking AT gmail.com>
  • To: ch-scene AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Nightlight Shows, week of July 14th!
  • Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 13:32:39 -0400

*Tuesday, July 15th, 9:30pm ($5)
The Boy Bathing* - *From Amplifier Magazine*: In spite of having a band
name that comes dangerously close to sounding precious, The Boy Bathing is
not a precious band. Fronted by singer-songwriter David Hurwitz, the New
York-based four-piece has garnered comparisons to Bright Eyes and The Arcade
Fire with folk rock ballads that are as brutally honest as they are
seductively sweet. And if The Boy Bathing's full-length debut, A Fire to
Make Preparations, is at times grandiose, it's the most self-effacing
grandiosity you're likely to encounter this side of Sufjan Stevens. Violins
and trumpets make frequent appearances, fortifying the wistful little kid
harmonies of Hurwitz and bass player-cum-backup singer Jeannie Scofield with
the grown-up Sturm und Drang of a badly broken heart. Album opener "The
Question's Simple" would seduce even the most jaded indie purist, cleverly
tracing an arc between The White Stripes' sing-songy "We Are Going To Be
Friends" and The Arcade Fire's anthemic "Rebellion (Lies)." The result is
terrifyingly pretty - a quality that seeps through the rest of the album
like a morphine drip. "The Miner's Jewel" is the best song The New
Pornographers never wrote, its shuffling optimism providing an unlikely
vessel for a paean to nostalgia, desire and regret. "The Beasts Obey" sounds
like New York by way of Nashville, with Hurwitz's slide guitar snaking
around lyrics that slice and dice with Lou Reed's serrated edge. As A Fire
to Make Preparations proves again and again, lyrics may be The Boy Bathing's
strongest suit. Whether whispered, cooed or snarled, Hurwitz's words delight
with their disarming blend of unpredictability, insight and jubilant
resignation. Closing track "A Fire" provides a perfect ending to the album's
tragicomic tale of archly observed disappointment, progressing from a
jarringly minimalist synth intro to a choir of voices proclaiming the joy of
arson. It shouldn't work, but it does. Beautifully. *From CMJ*: The Boy
has had their songs featured on compilations alongside the Arcade Fire and
Sufjan Stevens and has played shows with Kevin Devine and Lou Barlow. But
these profile-raising ventures didn't make their debut album any easier to
record, as it took almost two years for it to get completed because of
financial limitations. "We'd record some songs then have to work some more
to get more money," recall Hurwitz. "Plus, I'm a real perfectionist, and we
had to mix the album twice because we weren't happy with it the first time."
*
Graves of Fairmount* - *From his website*: I grew up in Northern California
listening to all of the Chapel Hill bands. Now I live here and make music.
Things have come full circle. *From Trianglerock.com*: The Graves of
Fairmount are a indie-rock band (major audible influences, near as I can
tell from their EP, anyway: Portastatic, Replacements, Elliott Smith, Belle
& Sebastian) that consist primarily of a single guy, Paul O'Keefe, who moved
here from Berkeley after a youth misspent listening to Chapel Hill bandes
like Superchunk.
*
Andrew Octopus* - From his website: An up-and-coming information artist
working with Neurolinguistic Programming, mathematics, maneuver warfare
concepts, and very cheap recording equipment. The first writer to blend
metaphysical science fiction with hardcore hip-hop fairy tales. The favorite
DJ of space tourists and time travelers.

*
Wednesday, July 16th, 9:30pm ($5)
Shakermaker* - *From Absolute Powerpop*: This is high-quality melodic indie
pop... The real standout here is "Sunday Ladies", a true pop triumph that
veers from Shins-ish indie pop, to the Beatlesque, to music hall and back
again all in the space of a few minutes. *From the Independent*:
SHAKERMAKER's weightless pop floats on a strange breeze. It's all wooden and
rustic until the '60s psych guitars whip through your hair, and those
sunburned melodies take hold. Like a modest Shins, 'verb bagged up and quirk
transformed, Mitch Eubanks and Jesse Moorefield understand the understated
but aren't scared to add proper garnish or let a guitar shout when it
should...
*
Birds and Arrows* - Folk duo from Chapel Hill. Guitar & drums with great
vocal melodies that remind me a bit of Emmylou Harris.

*Theodore* - *From their website*: In 2006, Justin and Jason saw each other
from across a room. Sparks flew. A song was playing. Next thing, they were
playing songs. Then Justin and Jason met JJ, and he, too, started playing
along with songs. This felt good, but something wasn't quite right. Where
there could have, or should have been more sounds, there weren't. Then
Justin remembered his old school chum/racquetball nemesis Andy. Andy said
"let's do this" and then the game was really afoot. This was is in the early
fall of 2006. Gears started grinding and the boys, finally a unit, began
recording their debut full length, the record that would come to be called
"Songs for the Weary" soon after. They worked all winter, toured a bit, and
played around home. They put their record out in time for a big west coast
tour, and things were going great. In Oregon their van died and the fellows
were in despair. What will we do, they cried? Miraculously, out of the
rabble of shysters appeared a white stallion, or a VW Eurovan. The boys
saddled up again and snatched morale from the jaws of utter defeat. When
they returned home their album was the toast of the town. After resting on
their laurels for a few months the fellows hit St. Louis' Penny Studio to
make a new record, called "Defeated, TN." Based upon a small collection of
letters they found in an abandoned house in Tennessee, it attempts to
document the disintegration of an American family faced with life's toils,
troubles, temptations, and dangers. It also attempts to express the ideal of
place, of home, as Wallace Stegner writes, as "a notion that only the
nations of homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."
Maybe there's hope, maybe there's not. The boys aren't qualified to say. But
one thing's for sure. The fellows of Theodore plan on putting out "Defeated,
TN" on whatever dimes they can find, driving it 'round this great land of
corn and cotton and coal and sawdust, and then there are tracks to be laid
down, always more tracks...


*Thursday, July 17th, 9:30pm ($5)
Irata* - *From Yes! Weekly*: This is definitely one of the most creative
heavy progressive-instumental albums thus far in 2008. Irata possesses more
than the typical technical riffs, distortion and melodic lines. It
experiments with a mix of under-and over-tone bridges incorporatin a perfect
industrial flow in and out of a formula that says, "We aren't sticking to a
formula." *From The Village Idiot*: Here on their debut album, Greensboro,
NC rockers Irata have made themselves strong contenders for the best
progressive rock band in the state. Between members Jason Ward, Jason Duff
and Jon Case , the swirling, driving guitars and intricate, pounding drums
build epically progressing instrumental gems that call to mind everyone from
legends like King Crimson and Tool to bands like Explosions in the Sky,
Graboids and the like.

*Darwin Deez* - *From his website*: 23 year old Darwin Smith writes,
records, produces and arranges using a 4-string electric guitar in his own
invented, secret tuning. He was raised by Baba Lovers (followers of Avatar
Meher Baba, like Pete Townshend) in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is 1/4
black. He cut his teeth at the sort-of-famous Sidewalk Open Mic, where he
met Andrew Hoepfner and joined Creaky Boards just in time for their first
stateside tour. You should see him dance when he's NOT holding his guitar!
He lives and performs on Manhattan's Lower East Side.


*Saturday, Friday 19th, 9:30pm ($5)
Bellflur* - *From BYT*: Bellflur's Monday night show at Iota with
headliners The Moderate, however, drew us out into the early-in-the-week
night. Lennon-look-alike Tom Longobardi, Carlos "Chris Martin plays sitting
down, hence I am not he" Gonzalez, Patrick, Hunter, et. al love their toys –
my plus-one kept hitting me on the shoulder and mentioning mysterious pedals
and korgs and … things which the Jameson's has gently blotted from the
ink-splotch of my memory, but which men love. Whizgigs. Gadgets. But they
were, sans question, things that required the bassist to remove his
checkered Vans and ply dials with his nimble toes. *(Note: Alan Alda can do
this, too, because he's a direct product of Chuck Norris and the people from
1972 classic fright-beard novel The Joy of Sex)*.

*Vinyl Cordova* - A new band from Carrboro! *From their website*: We're 3
kids who pretend to play some electronic experimental music.

--
NIGHTLIGHT Bar & Club

405 1/2 W. Rosemary St.
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
919.933.5550
www.nightlightclub.com
booking - nightlightbooking AT gmail.com
info, inquiries, etc. - nightlightinfo AT gmail.com



  • Nightlight Shows, week of July 14th!, Jenks Miller, 07/13/2008

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