Jaill/Strange Boys/Sugar Stems @ Cactus Club, 04.01.10
Posted 4/15/2010 by cal
Nothing like getting out to see a couple of local buzz bands at the
venerable Cactus Club.
I do not miss the hole-in-the-wall ambiance of the unremodeled joint
at all. This is Milwaukee, and we needed a bunch of good beers on tap
in our premier rock club. Besides, even more reliably than before, you
can walk in here on damn near any Friday or Saturday (in this case,
Thursday) and expect to hear why the Brew City scene is blowing up these
days. Tonight's bonus: a kick-ass group out of Texas that I'd never
even heard of.
The Sugar Stems
are a
slippery bunch. You'll catch a tune or two on WMSE, but the band has only released (to
my knowledge) one 45 at this point. Their set tonight made me really
crave a full album. Way more punk rock than I envisioned, though, so
maybe it's really best to see 'em live (note: April 17th, 5 p.m., Exclusive
Company on Farwell, as part of Record Store Day, along with a
buttload of other great local bands). The studio tunes sounded sweeter
but comparatively toothless. This set was classic pop-punk in the Screeching
Weasel/Queers vein. Sure, Betsy Borst doesn't spit out her
melodies with the venom of Ben Weasel; her singing and the tight
harmonies of Drew Fredrichsen are where the "sugar" part comes from.
Basically, they knocked our socks off for a half hour or so and that was
it, but it was the most exhilarating half hour of the evening.
That's no stab at the other two acts, though. The Strange Boys
came out professing to be bad singers, and I guess there's a case to be
made, but I come from a deep-seated Germs background
(i.e., the band that ceased to be in 1980 and still does not exist), and
Ryan Sambol possesses a similarly willful, wounded rasp to that of Darby Crash,
bordering on atonality. And I really dig it. The band plays
occasionally twangy, frequently dramatic indie rock with very few
frills. The sunken-eyed, semi-detached stage presence is par for the
hipster course, but the band is extremely tight and the playing clearly
comes from a place of deep conviction. Not knowing a single song, I was
totally engrossed for the entire set.
There was only one characteristic tying the three acts on the bill
together: they all rock. Local heroes Jaill, preparing
to release their Sub
Pop debut, came out in a celebratory mood: it was frontman
Vinnie Kircher's birthday. Perhaps a few more shots were downed than
usual, but it didn't seem to affect the performance. I keep reading
that Jaill is "psychedelic", which is usually a red flag for me. As far
as I can tell, they're just good-natured potheads playing
straight-ahead rock and roll, which is exactly what the fragmented,
image-conscious indie scene needs. In its ongoing effort to escape the
pigeonhole by diversifying beyond control, Sub Pop has unwittingly
signed a good old-fashioned grunge band. But not the sarcastic Melvins/Nirvana
kind; the drawling, amiable Mudhoney kind.
The performance was still amped up but considerably more at ease than
the last time I'd seen Jaill, pre-second "L", at Y-Not III last
year. We local music nuts have been raving about the burgeoning rock
surge for years now, and there's no point in resisting the gratification
in seeing these artists getting some recognition. There's no stylistic
umbrella for the Brew City Sound, but we couldn't ask for better
ambassadors than Jaill: unpretentious and loud, plug 'em in and watch
'em rock. Their self-effacing attitude belies their potential as a
commodity; I'm a little burnt out on making predictions, so I'll just
say they deserve the wider audience that a famous record label could
give them.
Walking out of the Cactus (in a t-shirt. On the first of April.), my
buddy Taybor (in from Denver for the weekend) made the comment,
"Milwaukee is as underrated as Chicago is overrated." See? It's not
just us Milwaukee geeks.