Slackjaw, Amy Kasio, The Shondes and a musing

Last night at The Church I saw three bands.

Slack­jaw [soon to be Ear­ly Girl] was a folky-mov­ing-toward-rock band from Cleve­land that put togeth­er a decent sound but I seem to have caught them in the awk­ward part of the tran­si­tion. The vocals are still folky and get over­whelmed by the music.

Amy Kasio was a two-piece elec­tron­ic out­fit with pop­py lyrics and a fun atti­tude meld­ed with seri­ous intent. The singer played with inflat­able instru­ments, which to me seemed an effec­tive send-up of tra­di­tion­al male pos­tur­ing in met­al and rock. I espe­cial­ly enjoyed the song “Blow Up the Ice Cream Truck” which you can lis­ten to on their myspace page.

The Shon­des [offi­cial site] head­lined the show. Brook­lyn-based hard rock or pow­er-punk or who cares, because they put on an awe­some show. I found myself want­i­ng to throw met­al horns a few times because the gui­tar and bass got so raw. The vio­lin was a wel­come addi­tion too.

Inci­den­tal­ly, shon­des is a Yid­dish word that means “out­cast, dis­grace, mon­ster” basi­cal­ly any per­son who does­n’t abide by what soci­ety defines as right. All the bands that played could be con­sid­ered shon­des because they lead [empha­sis on that word] lives out­side of the main­stream as either/and queers, trans­gen­dered, anti-occu­pa­tion Jews, and uni­lat­er­al unequiv­o­cal sup­port­ers of human rights.

I always find myself drawn to folks who are empow­ered and engaged in a right­eous cause against Attacks of The Stu­pid™, and when they play music that rocks, well slap me and call me Sal­ly.

Pics from the show start here.