Hey y’all, here it is—the final Threats & Promises of 2024. Thank you for your continued reading and support over this past year. Further, I want to thank personally every artist and musician whose work I wrote about for putting yourselves out there and getting your work done. As always, and with specific criticism aside, I can’t tell you how excited I was in 2024 to listen to your records and let people know about them. Here’s to everyone having a safe, happy and wonderful holiday season, and a prosperous and joyful 2025!
IT’S FRUITCAKE WEATHER: The artist known as Other Voices, Other Rooms will host his eighth annual Winter Solstice celebration Saturday, Dec. 21 at Flicker Theatre & Bar. He’ll DJ his signature blend of post-punk and synth-pop taken directly from cassettes of his live performances at Go Bar both in between acts and at the end of the night. Other artists on the bill this night are Vancouver, BC’s Dång Hunke (Astral Blessing, Shasta Cults), Wet Garden, and the current project from longtime Athens noise agitator Thom Strickland.
NEAR WILD HEAVEN: Legendary, however you choose to define that, Athens rockers Is/Ought Gap will return to the stage Friday, Dec. 20 at Ciné. Joining them are MegaBeth, the new project from Athens’ own Dana Downs, and Micro Trak, which is a side project of Oliver Domingo (Organically Programmed). The very next night Is/Ought Gap will open for Pylon Reenactment Society at Atlanta’s West End Wild Heaven brewery. For all other information, please see facebook.com/isoughtgap.
RELATEDLY AND FOR GOOD: The aforementioned Pylon Reenactment Society will headline New Year’s Eve at the 40 Watt Tuesday, Dec. 31. This is a pretty stacked bill, including Delta 8, Nuclear Tourism and Violent Violet. Tickets are $10 in advance and, presumably, the same at the door, but don’t quote me. This show is a benefit for Athens musician Kyle DeMartino (Violent Violet), and all proceeds will go to assist him with medical bills. For more info, please see facebook.com/pylonreenactmentsociety, and for advance tickets, visit 40watt.com.
MY BROTHER’S KEEPER: Songwriter Sloan Simpson, under his Sloan Brothers moniker, has been steadily crafting a new LP release for the past year while simultaneously releasing one-off singles. The latest comes from a true story of significant medical worry that occurred around Halloween. And, as could be expected, Simpson spun pop gold out of personal difficulty. The new song is “Breathing Distress Blues (DOA PDA),” and even though he totally hates when I find comparisons between his work and others, I’m still going to say that it hits that sweet power pop spot somewhere in between The Cars and Guided By Voices. In the spirit of full disclosure, note that Simpson and I have worked closely together both with his music and other projects, so feel free to take my musings with a grain of salt. Find the new song and many others at sloanbrothers.bandcamp.com.
ROBERT DE RECHERCHES MUSICALES: Robert Schnieder (Apples In Stereo) has a new EP out now named Man And The Computer. The music here was composed by Schneider and Suno AI, with all sounds being AI generated based on specific prompts by Schneider. These were being created by Schneider for W. Cullen Hart at the time of Hart’s death last month. These pieces are categorized as musique concrète in that they use raw sound as source material. This category is often known for harshness and abrasiveness. There’s some of that here, but this is also quite musical in a traditional sense and, overall, quite enjoyable. That said, this is not easy listening, so prepare yourselves and head over to cloudrecordings.bandcamp.com to find this.
LAST CALL: There’s not a lot of space to get into it here, but here’s a short rundown of things happening on New Year’s Eve and NYE adjacent shows that may just pique your interest. Flicker is hosting Immaterial Possession, Xeroxy Music (i.e. Roxy Music covers) and Nicholas Mallis (Dec. 31). The 40 Watt hosts Hayride’s Holiday Party with openers Shehehe (Dec. 30). Athentic Brewing will host The Original Splitz Band playing a slew of Motown hits (Dec. 31). The Nowhere Bar hosts Five Eight and Elf Power (Dec. 31). If none of that gets your dander up, you can always just go to bed at a reasonable hour. I don’t recommend that, but it’s your call.
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