Lightning Bolt
Wonderful Rainbow
Chris Bigel says: “Making naysayers outta Slayer haters”
Holy hell, this wind blows hard. Wonderful Rainbow isn’t exactly a new release, but Lightning Bolt’s metal storm blew through Portland a few weeks back and they literally rocked me out of the building. I lasted three songs before finding myself audibly forced to the rainy sidewalk trying to breathe something besides sweaty man-odor. I soon noticed a roll of smoke flowing up and out the front door. Interesting, I thought, before realizing it was steam from the crowd’s body heat. A friggin’ human hair dryer.
Any band that can do that in a tiny club/apartment in three songs should be crowned something, be given a golden feather, or have their genitals bronzed.
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone
Twinkle Echo
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Wayne Shaw says: “I wanna play keytar.”
You could easily lose Casiotone in the black-hair-dyed sea of bands doing similar lo-fi Goodwill keyboard beat experiments. Yes, the Casiologist convention is in town. Luckily, songwriter Owen Ashforth has a short attention span for his compositions, stopping most abruptly at the two-minute mark. Though the album sounds like it was recorded through two tin cans and a mile of rubber hosing, I’m feeling it.
There’s little to write because there’s little here. It’s a small record, made with tiny keyboards, playing micro songs, sung along to with pint-size vocals, telling short stories of a petite girl. I think that’s her on the cover. What up, girl? Holla at me.
Papa M
Three from the Audiotour Diary series
Lonny M. Palmer says: “And then he got kicked out, so I’m all, and he’s like, and then she totally all like …”
If today is Wednesday, Oct. 22, Papa M played at Berbati’s last night and you probably missed a fantabulous show, or you went and got pissed because everyone was talking the whole time he played. Why do they book quiet singer/songwriters at Berbati’s? It’s crap. No one can just shut up and listen. Even I talk the whole time. It’s contagious, talking is, especially after sweet brew.
I love you dearly, Papa M, but I have important things to say and I’m not letting your sweet folk traveling songs keep me from babbling the night away. Not even if you play the best new song, “Who Knows,” from the third installment off of your Audiotour Diary series.