“The Showdown” (Sundown at Granada): Space Disco is a rich and fertile genre, with many comparably enjoyable ancestors and offshoots. The great critic and author Simon Reynolds described the evolution of the music thusly:
Even dance culture has taken a turn towards the kosmische, with the fad for ‘space disco’, a genre pioneered by Norwegian producers Hans-Peter Lindstrom and Prins Thomas who are obsessed with an obscure late Seventies scene in northern Italy where disco and space rock collided and Italian youth trance-danced all night long in an LSD-spiked daze.
You can’t necessarily hear it in many places throughout Dallas lately, which is a shame. But tonight you’ll have an opportunity. Redsean and Blake Ward will be playing cosmically dusty selections, under their former “Psychic Soundsystem” moniker. You just might remember that themed event from the Bar Céline days, which has not changed as much as one might think, now that it’s the Gin Mill.
Cobalt Cranes/Bobby Jealousy/Birds of Night (Crown and Harp): As a Dallas Distortion Music show, this basically stays within the parameters of the fairly tasteful rock for which the organization is mostly known. The bill runs the gamut from a detached Los Angeles take (Cobalt Cranes); the Austin throwback sweater sound (Bobby Jealousy); and finally, a poignant Denton band who seem more concerned with nuanced songwriting than completely losing it. The Birds of Night do a better job than most, and I’m wondering why I don’t see the name more often.
Dead Tooth/Beyond Gods and Empires/The Initiative (Taqueria Pedritos): This last minute show is a tough one, and definitely on the more thrash-oriented end of hardcore. Headlining Dallas act Dead Tooth have an EP cover that features a unicorn being disemboweled, but they keep it topical with a track entitled, “Rise, Holy Slumlords.” On a somewhat related note, has your landlord ever tried to facetime you? It’s very awkward.
Other Tuesday events—
The Copyrights/Stymie/Not Half Bad/Special Guest/Enthusiast (1919 Hemphill)
Haim/Io Echo (Trees)
Local Natives/Wild Nothing (House of Blues)
Image: Cobalt Cranes. Credit: 230 Publicity.
