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Listings are in the opposite order of appearance: headliner is listed at the top, next is the support band(s), and the last band listed is the opener.


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Tuesday August 13 2019
 8:30PM doors -- music at 9:00PM
 
•••  ALL AGES
$13 in advance / $15 at the door
Prince Daddy & The Hyena         
www.facebook.com/princedaddyandthehyena/
 party punk
Retirement Party    ------ Kississippi are off the bill     
www.facebook.com/retirementpartychicago/
  Pop punk
Pictures of Vernon   
www.facebook.com/picturesofvernon/
  pop
Snooze
www.facebook.com/snoozeband
 
Mathrock 


Prince Daddy & The Hyena    
Kory, Cam, Zak, Alex
-from Weed Mountain, NY

-Cosmic Thrill Seekers, the new record from Albany punk rock band Prince Daddy & the Hyena, is many things. It is an odyssey of epic, The Monitor-esque proportions, a great, galloping sonic roadtrip across space and time and Albany, boomeranging around a horn of punk, pop, indie, garage rock, and orchestral, Queen-style arrangements and theatrics; it is an exploration of the fall-out after an acid trip, manic self-destruction, bottoming-out and recovering, and then slipping again; it is a candid, acute documentation of frontperson Kory Gregory’s cyclical mental health states as told through three acts and 14 songs/chapters; it is an existential presentation of eternal return theory, a victory via surrender to impermanence; and perhaps most of all, it is about Dorothy Gale and The Wizard Of Oz.
 
“Dorothy was the OG cosmic thrill seeker,” Gregory says. “Dorothy kind of encompasses everything I was trying to get at.”
 
There are three acts in Cosmic Thrill Seekers. Gregory explains, “Act One is The Heart, which is the Tin Man. Act Two is The Brain, which is the Scarecrow, and Act Three is The Roar, which is the Lion.” Each act explores a stage in Gregory’s mental health. “I remember watching the Wizard of Oz one time, and noticing some weird kind of parallels between the cyclical nature of my mental health and that movie,” he says. “My mental health rotates and jumps from one stage to the next, and then repeats itself.” The closing moments of Cosmic Thrill Seekers reflect this, as the outro to the last track, “The Wacky Misadventures of the Passenger,” morphs into the first muted notes of opener “I Lost My Life.”
 
Gregory’s assessment of his mental health is a process that’s coded into CTS’ DNA. “Observing my mental health for four years kind of gave me enough to work with to write this album,” Gregory continues. He wrote the entire record—music and lyrics—in solitude over a four year period in a closet in his bedroom. No one heard any of it until it was finished and ready to record—not even bandmates Cam, Zak, and Daniel. “When you have OCD like me, you want it to be perfect,” Gregory says of the process. During recording at PonderRosa Studios in Lafayette, New Jersey with producer Nick Dardaris (AKA beloved pal and Albany scene comrade Scoops), Gregory would ask his bandmates to leave before his vocal takes. Even pre-studio practices were held without a PA system, meaning no one else knew any of the words or melodies.
 
The process and finished product are tributes to the sort of friendship and community supports that define Prince Daddy. Gregory’s bandmates are his best friends, and they encouraged him to pursue the record he needed to make. “It’s very, very, very much a selfish record,” he says. “It wasn’t just the record I wanted to write, but this is for me, this is to help me, and hopefully to look back on when I’m in the more destructive phases of the cycle and realize that it’s not permanent, and that I’ve confronted it before. I’ve put some math to it.”
 
But the calculus of reckoning with mental illness isn’t linear, and neither is Cosmic Thrill Seekers. “I Lost My Life” opens the record with muted acoustic guitar and plinking keys as Gregory wrestles with the catalyzing acid trip. “I hit it one too many times and I lost my life,” he sings before a crescendo that crashes into “Lauren,” a triumphant pop punk gem with scorching leads. “I’m trying to move past this but no such luck/But you drag me the furthest from giving up!” Gregory shouts. “Fuckin’ A” follows suit, a similarly bright, guitar-forward headbanger that sees him in a state of recovery. There are many dialogues and characters on the record; each represent a different piece of Gregory’s mental composition.
 
But none of this first suite of songs is linear; each deviates from its own schematic, swerving gleefully between style and sound as the song sprints onward. “Cosmic Thrill Seeking Forever” is a falsetto-driven Blue Album-waltz that climaxes in duelling Thin Lizzy harmonies underscored with thrilling Brian May-style lines. It’s a bit of Worry., and a bit of escapism (“Dear heart, my vehicle, I will teach you how to fly, and if not, I’ll sit by while you rot”). “Slip” is all Nirvana guitar tones and grunge riffing while “Breather” borrows from the brisk mid-2000s guitar and hyper high hats of Franz Ferdinand and Interpol. The journey ends with “The Wacky Misadventures of the Passenger,” a brilliant, 5-minute+ punk rock ballad that switches time signatures midway through before ending, alongside a brass section, where it began—with Gregory at his lowest point. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again/I’m bored and need support,” he roars.
 
Cosmic Thrill Seekers is a constant replaying of this cycle, equal parts joyous and challenging; it’s a punk rock, mental health-oriented declaration of, ‘time is a flat circle.’ “The record title is very ambitious and big and grand, but as the first and last song kind of display, the message of the story is almost like, ‘There’s no place like home,’ even though Cosmic Thrill Seekers is the direct opposite of that,” Gregory says. “But it takes a journey to realize that, as it did for me, and as it did for Dorothy.”
 
To summarize in Gregory’s words: “This has the potential to get semi-dark, if you’re down with that.”





Retirement Party   
Avery Springer
Nick Cartwright
James Ringness
-from Chicago, IL

-party rockers from the windy city. Retirement Party is a playful party punk quartet from the Windy City. Singer/lyricist Avery Springer tells nervous, insightful stories in a stream-of-consciousness style. She focuses on the minute details of every situation to give the listener a true sense of location throughout the band's raucous, jittery tunes. The quartet's best quality is their undeniable chemistry reflected in tasty riffs and loosely structured jam sessions.
 
Pictures of Vernon
Anderson Ragan - Guitar
Daniel Gorham - Drums
Brody Rogers - Bass
Karly Hartzman - Synth
-from Asheville, NC

-beauty punk. Indie rock in 2017 either attempts to surmount unease, or at least make sense of it. For Pictures of Vernon, the two years between The Days are Just Packed – an elastic, snarling set of tracks toeing the line dividing garage demo from well-intentioned debut – and their self-titled follow-up were full of shifting moments. The North Carolina trio, headed by primary songwriter Anderson Ragan, balanced evolving their higher education and songwriting craft, only to channel that tug-of-war – and their eventual departures from college – into tense, concise lyricism. "Krelboyne Picnic" chronicles Ragan's dropout year with frantic bursts of throbbing guitar, while "This is Water" experiments with glittering pedal play and an ominous rhythm section to close out the action with a muted coda. Rather than explode their statements past their breaking points, the sentiments here are unleashed in measured time, even with "Public School" and its shrieking vocals finding their blown fuse too soon. As five songs that meld together emo, post-hardcore, and of course indie rock's nebulous platform, Pictures of Vernon has painted a new portrait, and it's one that allows them to move past their own problems.


Snooze
logan - guitar
grant - guitar
cameron - bass
joey - drums
-from Chicago, IL

-a happy heavy mathrock band from the Chicago burbs.