I just recently saw a great live show at NYC’s Cake Shop on the Lower East Side. The headliner was San Francisco’s amazing throwback Detroit-style rockers, Apache, and playing before them was New York’s Electric Shadows, who were equally rockin’ and who are currently working on a full-length debut album. But the opener that played before them both was Brooklyn’s The Weight, whose album, Are Men, has made me regret grabbing that second pre-show pitcher at Katz’s and rolling in after they wrapped up.
The Weight are very different than the bands that they shared the stage with that night, and they are very different from the other music scenes that they are used to sharing stages with in Brooklyn. Their new album, Are Men, is a fantastic display of dive-bar country tunes interspersed with rockin’ psych guitar rave-ups. They probably share the closest likeness in style with Gram Parsons-era Byrds and pre-Wilco band Uncle Tupelo, and I’m hearing some of the grit of good ole’ original country boys like Merle and Waylon. The band has dropped some of the ‘alt’ in the alt-country style more present on 2004’s 10 Mile Grace and really plays a looser, more fun version of country-rock. Not really what you think of when you hear “Brooklyn indie-band,” huh?
The album starts strong with “Like Me Better” which introduces the hillbilly singer who sounds like he is playing his first song of the night to a sparsely-attended dive bar. The rock presence picks up though just two and a half minutes in when the electric guitar forces its way in and hangs around for a good minute. I know, it’s unheard of, an extended guitar solo on a modern rock album! God bless ‘em for it. “Had It Made” follows and it makes it very clear that there is plenty of rocking to be done. Over the next few songs you get steel guitar, country wit and wisdom, a great harmonica solo, and a stellar guitar rave-up closes out the song “Talkin”. The epic 7-minute “Sunday Driver” is like The Weight’s “Tuesday’s Gone”.
The Weight’s Are Men is sheer rocky-tonk music that should be in every dive-bar jukebox in the country. I love this quote from the The Colonel Records’ one-sheet for the album…”for the similarly post-jaded kids and honest fans of Americana, Are Men sounds like the record you actually enjoy listening to.” It’s so true. The next time me and the boys are drinking an 18-pack of Bud at my place, I’ll certainly be spinning this album.
Sample some songs over here.
Hey, check out thes two killer new garage rock n’ roll bands who are using my awesome photos for their MySpace profile pics! They’re Apache and Electric Shadows.
While you’re there, check out their songs and their tour dates, because these guys know how to throw down!
…And it was great to see Saturday night at the Lower East Side’s Cake Shop! We were there to see the band Apache, whose debut album is excellent, and I wanted to see how they translated live. Well live is where the band really lives! It was complete sweat-drenched, classic style garage/glam rock & roll… reminiscent of the old Detroit masters of that game… the MC5, the Stooges, and even early Alice Cooper.
And we got there in time to see one of the bands that went on before Apache called Electric Shadows, who rocked equally well and grittily…and who gave us a great Kiss “Strutter” cover! It was obvious that these guys have been touring with each other at least for a while, as they were all buddies and there were lots of Shadows playing with Apaches, and Apaches playing in the Shadows set. It was like one big happy rock family!
Check out these bands on Myspace now…that is, if you like to rock!
And also check out this other band that went on first that night, who I missed, but loved their songs on Myspace…
