“Too Fresh Tuesdays” (Slip Inn): This local-centric hip hop weekly has had a last minute adjustment: it’s at the Slip Inn this evening instead of the Boiler Room. DJ Mike B will provide the entertainment, along with VA tha Gray, and there will be a listening party on behalf of the latter. However, you are encouraged to even bring your own music to showcase. A risky proposition for sure, but I admire that sort of boldness.
Soft Metals/Diamond Age/Redsean (Bryan Street Tavern): This show is the best of both worlds in that it combines the above-ground talents of Redsean—who has graduated from the slightly grittier clubs around town to much glossier heights, poolside views included—along with Diamond Age, who while he may also possess a good deal of electronic prowess, tends to play lower profile DIY-oriented engagements.
Soft Metals are the national act and headliner, who are accessible yet icy and alien enough to shapeshift into either environment just described, and I would put them in the realm of other acts who are currently making compelling music with similar synth-pop influences: Trust, Austra, and Xeno and Oaklander. That is perfectly admirable company, and this is a smart lineup.
Wild in the Streets (Double Wide): In which DJ Wild in the Streets, otherwise known as Lisa Bush, brings the terrible hair rock to a deserving end, if only for an evening. The thing about all of that hard rock at the Double Wide is that some of the crowd likes it sarcastically, a small percentage are weathered lifers who genuinely like it, and the rest just don’t know anymore.
It’s kind of like this instructional video on “How to Rock” I came across recently. It was made by local musician Ariel Bender, who performs in the Dallas hard rock band Missile. And while I get that Bender is attempting to be humorous, it’s impossible to tell when the joke begins and ends. Rock music, in its purest form, should not be such a punchline. It’s often only funny when a band seems like they’re having a collective aneurysm onstage, and yet the sound they’re producing is very timid and mild.
But back to Lisa, she’s great and she plays French pop and soul 45s, and I think we can all agree on that at least.
Other Tuesday Shows—
Tech N9ne (South Side Music Hall):
Graham Wilkinson (Sundown at Granada): This will be directly following the sold out Ben Harper show next door.
Image: Promotional shot of Soft Metals via Captured Tracks. Credit: Suzy Poling.
