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Threats & Promises

Josey’s Guitar Demos, And More Music News and Gossip

Josey

EBONY & IVORY: The UGA Performing Arts Center is deep in the midst of its 2022–2023 season, and coming up this week is a widely anticipated performance from the Anderson & Roe Piano Duo. Composed of the Julliard-trained Greg Anderson and Elizabeth Joy Roe, this is the first time they’ll perform for UGA. Currently celebrating two decades together, the pair will perform at the Hodgson Concert Hall on Friday, Sept. 16 at 7:30 p.m. Many millions of fans have enjoyed the duo’s video presence on YouTube, and their performance consists of a diverse set of work ranging from Mozart to The Beatles. Tickets range from $30–$60 and can be found at pac.uga.edu/event/anderson-roe-piano-duo. Tickets may also be purchased in person at the Performing Arts Center Box Office Monday–Friday from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. or by phone at 706-542-4400 during those same hours. For all other information, please see pac.uga.edu.

BRO’S CLUES: Donald Whitehead’s longstanding project Space Brother just released a new set of highly incongruous tracks. There’s a full 20 of them on the man’s new collection named Waves, and the incongruity comes from these first appearing to be inwardly focused but, in the end, actually working well as hushed, outwardly projected suggestions. Working through a set of sounds including clipped beats, glitch samples, echoes, turntable needle static and too many other unidentifiable things to attempt naming, this collection is like an aural set of writing prompts encouraging the listeners’ own creativity. Of course, this is completely listenable in its own right to a certain audience. Its fractured nature, and individually short run times, is more akin to peeking into someone’s sketchbook than experiencing the whole of their finished work. Check it out at spacebrother.bandcamp.com.

BRAND NEW LOVE: I’ve been checking out the work of Athens artist Josey for a few years now and have always been intrigued, if not outright enthused. There’s a new set of tunes available to check out that just hit the street, and it’s named Guitar Demos, which may or may not be entirely accurate. I mean, they certainly retain the amateur quality that I’ve come to know and enjoy with Josey’s music, but these are also quite catchy and tuneful with an indie/sorta-psych style. Certain songs—such as “Mind Blip” and opening track “Today”—wouldn’t be out of place at all on, say, early releases from both Sebadoh and/or Guided By Voices. Your mileage will vary, but if you’re game for a test drive, head to joseytwallace.bandcamp.com.

IN WITH THE OLD: Newly online are some old releases from Athens garage punk rockers The Agenda. Of course, this was garage rock made back when garages were eminently affordable, so take from that what you will. At any rate, the band—composed of Ryan and Mat Lewis, Dan Geller, Justin Robinson and Ian Cone—were loud, brash, bratty, combative, kind of out of control, and the recipients of a huge amount of praise and acclaim in a very short amount of time. Now the group’s full catalog, with the exception of maybe an imported single or two, is available online. These releases are the band’s debut LP Start The Panic! (2002), the EP Strike A Viper (2004) and the EP Only The Young Die Young (2010). Find all these now at theagenda.bandcamp.com.

OLD ENOUGH TO VOTE: For as best I can figure, Athens/Moultrie band Wickets has been making and releasing music for at least 18 years. But it took one of the members sending me a private message via Twitter—which is a highly unrecommended way to grab my attention as it’s entirely hit-or-miss, and mostly a miss—for them to land on my radar. While it’s a bummer having missed out on years and years of their music, it’s nice to have a lot to check out now because it’s all just so dang good. Specifically, they tipped me to their recent triple-disc set named Poltergeist: The Athens Albums which is noted online as having been released in 2020, but who really knows, right? Anyway, Wickets’ music is solidly in the college rock tradition but with the keeping in mind that such designations were always fluid within reason. To wit, the song “Not Like Me” ultimately owes more to Motown than Merge. Then there are top tracks like “Age Without Wisdom” that positively channel the rock-pop language of the 1960s. Then there are songs like “Movie Moonbeams” that in any just universe would position Wickets as peers of both Elf Power and the Olivia Tremor Control. There’s a huge amount of material here, not to mention the group’s back catalog, so prepare to really settle in with these guys. Find The Athens Albums on Spotify and everything else on wickets.bandcamp.com. If you dig it, then follow along at facebook.com/wickets02.

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