ABC Pick
Summer Hymns, Destroyer (Saturday, October 20 - Ultramod Compound)
originally published October 17, 2001
The slightly psychedelic Athens pop-rock band formed in 1997 under the tutelage of singer-guitarist Zach Gresham and drummer Philip Brown (both of Joe Christmas). The line-up has included members of Masters Of The Hemisphere, Of Montreal, Elf Power and other E6 gangs. Flagpole's Emerson Dameron described A Celebratory Arm Gesture as "cerebral pop music."
Misra also released a psychedelically-poppy 12-song album from the Vancouver-based quintet Destroyer titled Streethawk: A Seduction. Destroyer is fronted by song craftsman Daniel Bejar, a tall Canadian influenced by the likes of Bowie, Eno and The Fall who recently contributed to the recent New Pornographers' album, Mass Romantic (Mint) "While Destroyer pays a debt to classic sounds, Bejar's talent shines brightest in his overtly literary lyrics," says Phil Waldorf. "His words spill out like poetry... sometimes the message is unmistakable, other times it's hidden in twisted vines of allegory." [BL]
ABC Pick
Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Sex Mob (Thursday, October 18 - Georgia Theatre)
originally published October 17, 2001
The band recently participated in a live music project called "So Many Roads," organized by former Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, and sold out multiple night stands at The Fillmore in San Francisco and The Irving Plaza in New York. If that's not enough cred to lure a hippie crowd, what is?
But the tall-standing saxophonist and flautist is no hippie noodler. Denson is a highly proficient player and considers himself a "jazz historian" working on developing a jazz hybrid with soul and funk influences. He took time away from his duties in the influential "acid-jazz" ensemble the Greyboy Allstars in 1998 and assembled the Tiny Universe - a funky sextet dedicated to the quest for the "almighty groove." Whereas the Greyboy Allstars often stretched into more freaked-out experimental jazz ramblings, Tiny Universe is determined to anchor itself in a structured and perhaps more soul-filled groove.
The new album features 11 winding exercises in 4/4 funk and groove with loads of James Brown beats, top-notch woodwind and percussion work, pithy organ and Wurlitzer sounds, and the quirky vinyl-scratching talents of DJ Logic.
Joyfully wacked-out New York jazz quartet Sex Mob, touring behind its latest opus titled Solid Sender, opens the show with a pile of "sonic organization and interpretations" of various jazz notions and rockisms. [BL]
ABC Pick
Digital Underground (Wednesday, October 17 - 40 Watt Club)
originally published October 17, 2001
The show is sponsored by UGA's Chi Phi fraternity. All proceeds go to the September 11 Fund. Slackdaddy opens. [James Castle]
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