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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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Thursday November
18 2021 8:30PM doors -- music at 9:00PM ••• 21 AND OVER $12 in advance / $15 at the door Mt.St.Mtn. Band Showcase presents... Cindy cindytheband.bandcamp.com/album/1-2 indiepop slowcore Massage massagetheband.bandcamp.com/music jangle pop sensitive punk Julian Never wwwwww.mtstmtn.com/audio/mtn-23-julian-never-silver-one lo-fi pop Cindy -from San Francisco, CA -Karina Gill. She became a musician only recently, having sat on the sidelines while ex-partners and friends made their stabs at it. Gill describes a chance encounter with an abandoned Squire Strat left in the basement by a previous tenant, “mummified in electrical tape with the remnants of a burrito on the head stock”, that led her to begin carefully strumming her way through simple chords and making her own songs. After one interesting self-released LP, still finding their footing, the band made the masterful and buzzed-about Free Advice, which went from a limited cassette on local SF label Paisley Shirt to vinyl pressings on Tough Love (UK) and Mt St Mtn (USA). Cindy’s third LP arrives in quick succession, the quietly devastating 1:2. Jesse Jackson on bass, Simon Phillips on drums and Aaron Diko on keyboards weave the perfectly thin web behind Gill’s slow Velvety strums and murmured melodies. The rhythm section brings the crude flow, while the keys add subtle and surreal counterpoint to the withering world Gill depicts in her lyrics. “Songs tie together seemingly disparate things by the logic of mood,” Gill tries to explain. This isn’t dream-pop sunshine bliss; half-closed black drapes hang on the window where the narrator stares into the middle distance. “Sometimes you say you’re feeling small/You plan all day for your own funeral”, she intones in Party Store. Gill has a way of halting her phrasing that makes it feel like her thoughts are gently tumbling into the abyss. It’s this unsettling quality mixed with the hazy atmosphere that makes Cindy’s new LP 100% addicting and the perfect antidote to comfort listening. - Glenn Donaldson, 2021 Massage -from Los Angeles, CA -On their sophomore effort, Still Life, Los Angeles’ Massage manage to take a quantum leap forward in songwriting, production, and depth, all somehow without seeming to try. These 12 deft songs are full of late-summer sunlight and deep shadows, pained grins and shared jokes, shy declarations of love and quietly nursed heartbreak. Still Life resurrects a brief, romantic moment in the late-'80s, right after post-punk and immediately before alt-rock, when it seemed like any scrappy indie band might stumble across a hit. The kind of music Massage makes—sunny, bittersweet, tender—is less a proper genre than a minor zip code nested within guitar pop. Take a little "There She Goes" by the La's, some "If You Need Someone" by the Field Mice; the honey-drizzled guitars from The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love," a Jesus & Mary Chain backbeat, and you're almost all the way there. Indie pop, jangle pop, power pop—whatever you call it, pushing too hard scares the spirit right out of this sweet, diffident music, and Massage have a touch so light the songs seem to form spontaneously, like wry smiles. Julian Never -from Sacramento, CA -Julian Never is the recording project of long-time Sacramento CA underground stalwarts Julian Elorduy and Mark Kaiser, both of noise-punk legends Mayyors. A melting pot of influences ranging from 70s-80s U.K./Aussie/Kiwi D.I.Y. & post-punk to American power-pop of the same era colliding to form a punchy, layered web of sound anchored by Elorduy’s (also formerly of Fine Steps) dreamy tenor and Kaiser’s (also formerly of Male Gaze, on Castleface Records) bass guitar. “Been a while since I’ve heard rumblings from Mayyors’ camp, but this new project from the band’s Julian Elorduy and Mark Kaiser embraces a less gritty vision of pop, setting their sights on the sun-warped jangle of ‘80s Flying Nun this time around. Backed by ethereal synths and beset with jangles, the title track to this single is a bittersweet gem that would fit in well with the acolytes of the Nun that have currently cropped up all over Australia in the last few years. Elorduy and Kaiser have worked out a pretty solid handle on pop here, shedding some of their raucous punk past (Kaiser was also in Male Gaze), and it all comes crashing to a head on “Silver One.” On the flip, the band postures in am more tender vein, opening with the somber strains of piano, given a slight nod to their more lo-fi past before swapping the keys for strums that, like new works from The Tubs, rope in some of the more tender side of the Creation catalog to the mix with touches of Felt and The Sneetches sneaking in. A solid single from the new band and one that gives cause to keep an eye on them. Hoping that this works itself out into something longterm.” - Raven Sings The Blues |
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