at the StarlineSC Crystal Cavern
8:30pm doors, 9pm show. $8, 21+
Behavior is a band from Los Angeles, comprised since 2012 of Bedros Yeretzian, Evan Burrows, and Justin Tenney. Their collaboration is a shifting ad hoc agreement, organized around a permissive sensibility that is anchored to consistency of image rather than genre myopia. Their music continues to map a line of departure, a stumbling movement in restless hopscotch across a pop music tradition that has tallied an unlivable inheritance of promises. Their third album, Spirits & Embellishmentsi, s a brush fire, hungry for oxygen, choking the dry air with lavender, sage, and melting plastic. The tools are simple, the atmosphere is stark, the space is literal. These are tactile rock n roll songs, shaped at root by the extreme techniques of punk in all its groping permutations. These songs are lengths of multichrome climbing rope coiled like snakes, brought to life by way of melodrama, and contemporary in their free association. They were conceived with irreverence for the distinction between Crass and The Rolling Stones, to leverage the evaporating space of antagonism between first wave post-punk and its commercially unambivalent counterparts.
"Key players among the recent spate of jitter-itchy sax-honking oddbods out of Oakland, CA – see also The World, No Babies and Violence Creeps, for whom Preening’s Max Nordile also plays. Here, his saxophone features instead of a guitar, rather than as well as one, and leans towards lyrical, abrasive hard bop where in VC it seemed more like a blunt instrument of noise. On ‘PO Box’, track two of five on the EP, he seems to go to battle against his bandmates, bassist Alejandra Alcala and drummer/sometime music journo Sam Lefebvre, as they maintain a stout postpunk rhythm’n’chant until overwhelmed by Nordile’s slobber’n’blow. If the idea of Ted Milton’s Gloucestershire jazzpunx Blurt playing with the scorch of Lydia Lunch’s Teenage Jesus tickles you, stop dreaming and start Preening.” - The Quietus
Body Double is the creation of Oakland-based musician/songwriter/front woman Candace Lazarou. Though a stylistic departure away from her former band Mansion’s brand of neo no-wave minimal skronk, the presence of Lazarou’s vocal and lyrical stylings still have a bold presence in Body Double. Three years of Lazarou’s songwriting, home recording and searching for the right line up has produced a fully formed band and a quality crop of well thought out new songs. Though a bit more melodic than Lazarou’s past work, Body Double delivers still just the right amount of surprises and an overall sense of cleverly executed vitriol that’s urgently needed in these times.