PSYCHEDELIC GARAGE-PUNK | JEFF The Brotherhood
w/ Mechanical River Dream Band, DUMB Doctors
Thurs. Oct. 4
9 p.m.
$12/adv., $15/door
Pour House
Magick Songs, the just-out 13th album by the Nashville band JEFF The Brotherhood, is a game-changer for them in a few different ways. First off, it marks the official recruiting of bassist Jack Lawrence and multi-instrumentalist Kunal Prakash into a group that used to just be guitarist Jake Orrall and his drummer brother Jamin. Secondly, it’s a lot more experimental than the band has been on their last few releases, taking their usual neo-psychedelic garage punk and expanding it into more experimental territory; the songs are often based on pulsing grooves rather than fuzzed-out guitars. But perhaps the biggest change is that the band recorded the album themselves for the first time, with Jake Orrall serving as engineer. “I did this one myself in my living room,” he says. “So we were kind of thrown into a completely new territory with that, and we just kind of winged it.” That winging it is where the new, looser vibe of the album came from, in fact. “There was nothing written,” Orrall says. “We hung out and jammed for a couple of months and then put some stuff together and put some vocals on it. That was basically it.” —Vincent Harris THURSDAY
GLOWSTICK FUNK | Sexbruise?
w/ SLONE, The Quickening
Fri. Oct. 5
9 p.m.
$5
The Royal American
The sensual electro-funk of Sexbruise? is in trouble, folks. After a successful-ish tour of North Korea, the band lost guitarist Caleb “DJ Setbreak” Bodtorf and snack provider Stratton “DJ Desktop” Moore in a prison camp. Thankfully, they’ve found a new sponsor in Four Loko to take the pain away. “We forgot to mention Four Loko in those [new] songs, but you can hear the influence there,” says drummer John “Nasdaq” Pope. “You can definitely tell we created them in a Four Loko Frenzy™,” keyboardist Julie Slonecki adds. Upon returning to the States, Pope and Slonecki found that an insurgency against their supreme funk reign had begun. The movement is known as Sexbruise? Haters In Transit, or SHIT for short. “They really don’t like Sexbruise?’s devil-may-care attitude,” says Slonecki. “They also really have a hatred of snacks.” Pope believes that SHIT is from the Midwest, causing their unnatural hatred of quick food options. Sexbruise? asked City Paper not to tell readers to arrive prior to show time to pick up a protest sign. We were also instructed not to inform attendees that they will receive prizes for protesting. So don’t protest Sexbruise? or their new song “Rite Aid.”
—Heath Ellison FRIDAY
OLD-SCHOOL SKA | The Toasters
w/ Sex Wax, Maids Of Ace
Tues. Oct. 9
9 p.m.
$10
Tin Roof
Singer/guitarist Robert “Bucket” Hingley has been leading the Toasters since 1981, but don’t let the band’s age fool you. One of the great second-wave ska bands to come out of the early ’80s may have had more members than the New York phone book, but they can still handle that pumping ska-punk beat and those jittery horns just fine. Which isn’t surprising if you look at their resume. Any band good enough to open for Bad Brains as their first-ever gig or have their debut EP produced by new-wave icon Joe Jackson is bound to have some serious skills. And in a sense, their longevity is a testament to the ability of just about any genre of music to go from fringe to acceptable if you give it enough time. It’s difficult to imagine anyone back in 1981 thinking that the Toasters’ frenetic bounce-fest “2 Tone Army” could become the theme for a Nickelodeon show (the sketch-comedy series KaBlam!), but here we are. —Vincent Harris TUESDAY
HIP HOP | Landon Wordswell
w/ Gray Jackson, Classic, Damn Skippy, Sista Misses
Fri. Oct. 5
9 p.m.
$5
Tin Roof
The long wait for the lyrically agile Landon Wordswell’s next album is almost over. 2015’s Prayer and Whiskey showed the rapper swinging for the fences with songs like “100 Percent” and “Fake,” expertly pushing an emotional narrative of his life and fiery political statements. His next album, The Numbers Game, promises to represent those sides of Wordswell again, but mix them together in a way that resonates with the rapper. “I feel like it’s definitely my favorite album I’ve written,” he says. Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow was an inspiration for the new LP, which discusses Wordswell’s experience in a community heavily impacted by mass incarceration. “When it comes down to talking about socially conscious stuff and politics in general, I don’t like to come off like preachy,” he says. “What ended up happening was I started seeing the connections between some of the choices I was making in my personal life due to the situation I am in politically.” The Numbers Game is expected to drop in early 2019. —Heath Ellison FRIDAY
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