FOLK ROCK | Great Peacock
Fri. July 1
10 p.m.
$5
Home Team BBQ, Sullivan’s Island
Most of the Nashville, Tenn. outfit Great Peacock’s songs have a moment where a delicate, almost fragile web of acoustic guitars and harmony vocals give way to a cranked-amp electric crescendo, either mid-verse or in an anthemic chorus. And that’s exactly the way the band wants it. “We’re very conscious of dynamics from the get-go,” says singer-guitarist Andrew Nelson. “It’s what we try to be most aware of, not only when we’re writing the songs but when the band is arranging them. It has a way of keeping the listener engaged and active in what’s going on, and to me it’s a really powerful component in music that shouldn’t be forgotten. It’s a proven formula.” It’s also about a million miles from the straight-ahead acoustic Americana of their 2013 debut EP. “We started off as a folk band,” Nelson says. “That first EP didn’t have a single amplified electric track on it. But we started playing live, and a year and a half later we found out we were a rock band and we didn’t even mean to be. So we just said, ‘Well, fuck it. We are what we are.'” —Vincent Harris FRIDAY
INDIE FOLK | Wonky Tonk
Sun. July 3
10 p.m.
Free
The Mill
Covington, Ky.-based Jasmine Poole, a.k.a. Wonky Tonk, started making folk music in high school in hopes that if she made it big, maybe, just maybe, Michael Cera would notice her. “I had the biggest crush on Michael Cera in Arrested Development,” she says. “Anyway, I started booking shows, and it turned out people actually liked the tunes … It’s a funny thing, accepting your destiny.” Smart and snappy lyrics are delivered with an indie lilt and a country twang, reminiscent of Jenny Lewis cut with a Jeff Tweedy edge. Her 2015 album Stuff We Leave Behind took six years to complete, a project filled with themes of moving on. It’s as anti-establishment as any rock ‘n’ roll act. Poole comments on her sound, “It’s like if Loretta Lynn sang for The Cramps … [She] was the most punk-rock cowgirl I’ve ever heard of.” At the end of the day, Wonky Tonk is a prime example of an honest folk-singer who is not afraid to add bits and pieces of rock distortion and pop sugar to create a sound that’s entirely her own. “I write each tune acknowledging the trials of life while also finding some sort of reasonable silver lining,” Poole says. “Because after all, I have to repeat these things every night … Might as well repeat that you accept something bad happened but good comes from it.” —Graham Crolley SUNDAY
BEACH METAL | Godwin Falcon
Tues. July 5
10 p.m.
Free
Recovery Room
Charleston’s Godwin Falcon makes beach metal, a sound that’s been in the works for a while. “When we were all kids, drinking boxed wine and fighting each other on Sullivan’s, we decided that bro-chug and math-rock needed to go on a roadtrip to Shredville,” says “Savage” Paul Pavlich, the band’s bassist. “We slapped that bag and made magic out of the ether. Then we went to the One-Eyed Parrot and made Jimmy Buffet buy us beers. We were 10, and Jonni [Peace, drummer] was, like, fuck, six or something.” The band — consisting also of vocalist Brenton St. John, a.k.a. “BeatBox,” guitarist Matt Hughes, a.k.a. “Malibu,” and guitarist Creighton Jones, a.k.a. “the Meat Cleaver” — will celebrate their first release in two years on Tuesday. The brand new single is called “Showcase Brodown,” and it’s an ode of sorts to the former host of The Price is Right. “It’s a chronicle of Bob Barker’s sexual escapades and harassment cases,” Pavlich says. “We want to let everyone know that he had no honorable host-dom.” —Kelly Rae Smith TUESDAY
ATMOSPHERIC ROCK | Stop Light Observations
w/ People’s Blues of Richmond
Fri. July 1
10 p.m.
$20
The Windjammer
Earlier this year, Charleston’s Stop Light Observations released a single called “Dinosaur Bones.” It’s a moody, atmospheric rock song with just enough Southern grit, bathed in vast-sounding production, blurry guitars, and angelic vocals. It’s a logical extension of the more basic sound the band created on their 2013 album Radiation. Which makes the two electronic, dance-music inflected songs the band released in between the album and the new single something of a mystery, and it’s a move that, to hear singer Will Blackburn tell it, the band regrets. “After releasing those songs we kind of looked at each other and said, ‘Why? Why did we do that?'” Blackburn says. “Are we trying to appeal to a more Top 40-type sound? Are we trying to get into more of a synthesizer-type thing?’ So going into the next record, our mindset was, ‘Let’s forget every single thing we thought about when we made those two songs.’ For this one we said, ‘Let’s go back to the way people did this in the ’60s: cut the whole thing live.'” —Vincent Harris SUNDAY
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