Beat Beat Beat

w/ The Coathangers, The Selmanaires and 63 Crayons

Thursday, October 25 @ Caledonia Lounge

originally published October 24, 2007

When MTV comes screeching into your city to profile your growing rock scene, there’s a tendency to forget many of the bands who've been plugging away for as many arduous years but might not have the suave mass appeal television producers crave. Atlanta’s Beat Beat Beat was noticeably absent from a May MTV News segment chronicling the rise of the city’s indie-rock scene; this despite springing nearly four years ago from the same DIY punk scene now focused on the Black Lips, the Coathangers and others.

In fact, the Beats' first single was on scene-mainstay the Carbonas’ vinyl imprint Douchemaster. It garnered rave reviews from all varieties of DIY music heads thanks to its snotty ’77 punk throwback attitude that draws on Australian heroes like the Saints and the Fun Things. If the Dead Boys fought Radio Birdman in an alley on the Bowery, Beat Beat Beat would be there to place bets and steal instruments. And just like those fogeys, these Beats can really play. Last year, the band released its first album, Living in the Future, on Northwest power-pop label Dirtnap, and as a result found itself in another futuristic environment: the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 video game skate., right there alongside Nirvana, N.W.A., Devo and Dead Prez.

Beginning Thursday, the quintet will tag along with the Coathangers for a jaunt up the East Coast. It won’t be the first road trip for these brats, and it probably won’t be the last. Rather than getting caught with the meat in their mouth, they’ll keep gigging along, avoiding the nasty nightmare that television exposure, overeager bloggers and well-paid publicists can create for a band.

Scott Reid

Hoots & Hellmouth

Monday, October 29 @ Tasty World

originally published October 24, 2007

Hoots & Hellmouth's self-titled debut album, released on the MAD Dragon label, begins with a single organ note held precipitously for several beats, as if it will dive into a calamitous din at any moment. Of course, it does: "Want on Nothing" immediately establishes a jostling acoustic groove that seems to get faster and faster as the song's excitement increases. The band shouts a lively call-and-response, then ends the song just shy of speaking in tongues. It's acoustic gospel played with punk ferocity, and almost by necessity, the next song, "Home in a Boxcar," is mellower, with a curlicue guitar riff and an amiable amble.

Hoots & Hellmouth, which hails from Philadelphia, belongs to a burgeoning roots scene steeped in pre-rock traditions, with acts like The Hackensaw Boys, Langhorne Slim, The Avett Bros. and Chatham County Line blending bluegrass, jazz, ragtime and country with more modern strains of rock and punk. Hoots & Hellmouth's gospel leanings set it apart from its peers; the live shows sound like sweaty tent revivals, and songs like "Want on Nothing" and "This Hand Is a Mighty Hand" testify mightily. Sean Hoots howls like Janis Joplin in church, attacking his melodies with a combination of ecstasy and worry.

Instead of punk amateurs, though, Hoots & Hellmouth is comprised of four talented musicians who cohere onstage and on record into an egoless unit. In addition to namesakes Sean Hoots and Andrew "Hellmouth" Gray trading off instruments, Robert Berliner plays a mean mandolin and late band addition Ramone Sender plays upright bass. All sing, stomp and shout, but they also exert an admirable control that makes stand-outs like "Abattoir Altar Boy and Girl" and "Rattle These Bones" sound moody and surprisingly complex. That dynamic - between bold and restrained, blunt and incisive - makes the album Hoots & Hellmouth one of the most distinctive roots debuts of the year, and this Monday's show one to catch.

Stephen Deusner

Celebration

w/ Black Angels and Spindrift

Tuesday, October 30 @ 40 Watt Club

originally published October 24, 2007

If Celebration's moniker is to be taken literally, it's the kind of party where something somehow makes its way into your drink, in all likelihood resulting in disorientation, poor decision making and the mysterious loss of your slacks. The trio of Katrina Ford (vocals, percussion), Sean Antanaitis (multiple instruments) and David Bergander (drums) collectively plays the role of the Sunday morning transient ambling, however serpentine, towards retribution,a hungover mixture of wounded pride, grudging guilt and bruised hope.

And speaking of bruises, I am going on record as saying that if I were unlucky enough to find myself in a fight with Ford, odds are I would probably be on the losing end of the situation. Based on the kind of physicality indicated by her utterly gripping and distinctly tough vocal performances, she does not seem like the kind of person who is easily pushed around. As she once told Willamette Week, "I don't like women to play the victim's role, so I try to turn the tables. In the stories I tell, the women tend to be the victimizers." Her shared history with husband Antanaitis in dark, churlish '90s bands like Jaks and Love Life was marked by a sort of pathological seething and intensity that has been reined in - but by no means diminished - in Celebration.

In this new setting, roles of victim and perpetrator appear to be beside the point. Aggression still lives in Celebration's music, but the real goal appears to be something approaching transcendence. On new album The Modern Tribe, out earlier this month, get-yourself-to-church pipe organs and Latin American rhythm achieve a confluence that is wholly natural, and provide a perfect bed for Ford's powerful presence. If you ask me, Celebration seems like the perfect soundtrack to stretching Halloween into a 48-hour affair.

Jeff Tobias