Bad relationships make for great local music this month
Now that all your wild summer anecdotes have been exhausted it’s time to get on with October. It can be a tough pill to swallow but at least we’ve got a few shows to kick up some dust and keep the good times a rollin’.
On Friday October 3 Broken City will feature a very special reunion show for one of Calgary’s most ass-kicking punk rock three-pieces The Trophy Wives . Mixing slinky restrained tremolo-coated garage rock with the growling and spitting of punk they’re more like a slow-acting poison than your usual kick to the head. The acidic feminism in their lyrics (like the chilling threat of arsenic in “I’m Yer Wife”) pushes the trio beyond any all-girl cliché falling more accurately under the category of plain old badass.
“Most of the stuff I write about is from a female point of view” singer-guitarist Stef Bolianatz told Fast Forward . “Definitely all of us are feminists but none of us think it’s a big deal that we’re all girls in a band.”
We last heard from the Wives in spring 2007 when they simultaneously released their debut album and played their last show. They dissolved with the departure of drummer Caitie Jane Parsons but now that Parsons has triumphantly returned the band is gearing up for an encore going hard until all three ladies part ways again in a few months.
“Sydney [Koke bassist] and I agreed to keep jamming after Caitie left” says Bolianatz. “We tried a few different people but it was really hard to find a drummer that was as good as her so when she came back it was a no-brainer.”
The Trophy Wives’ arm candy for tomorrow evening will be The Sublinguals and The Exploding Pigs featuring members of Forbidden Dimension The Cripple Creek Fairies and Gaye Rage.
Fresh from a small town in Eastern Germany Calgary folk songwriter Rae Spoon is releasing his new album Superioryouareinferior in stores on Tuesday October 7. A release party will be held at The Marquee Room on Wednesday October 8 to match. According to his MySpace page the album turns a corner for Spoon featuring more avant garde elements and electronics in lieu of boring old stringed instruments. For anyone out of the loop on this one trust me get into it.
On Saturday October 11 Calgary’s most treasured garage-pop band Pine Tarts take the stage at The Palomino Social Club with Savants and our old punk-rock friends The Sublinguals. Apparently it’s also Pine Tarts lead singer Jesse J. Powell’s birthday bash so you better take a nap beforehand to make sure you don’t get all tuckered out after six rounds of birthday shots.
While you’re busy deciding which Jonas brother you want to be this Halloween why not take a breather at The Marquee Room on Saturday October 25 with some nice death metal? Calgary’s very own grindcore kids I Die Screaming will do a little soft-shoe with their friends The Ex-Boyfriends .
