Having conquered music-video channels, hard-rock radio stations, and metal magazines nationwide, local boys Saliva return to town this week to shoot the video for their next single, the rap-metal room-shaker “Click, Click, Boom.” Saliva will give a concert at the New Daisy Theatre on Friday, August 10th, with out-of-town hard-rockers Life, Systematic, and Stereomud.
Though they have roots in the mid-’90s avant-garde indie-rock group Three Mile Pilot, Pinback boasts a sound much more accessible than that band and every bit as compelling. The band’s forthcoming album, Blue Screen Life, balances churning guitars and chanted vocals with a clear pop sensibility in a sound that strongly evokes one of the present period’s biggest alt-rock bands, Modest Mouse, who played a highly successful local show last year at Last Place on Earth. Pinback will join Snowglobe, one of the local music scene’s best-kept secrets, for a show at the Hi-Tone Café on Sunday, August 12th. — Chris Herrington
The Bottle Rockets, those rough-and-tumble desperadoes from Festus, Missouri, often get branded as alt-country outlaws. I’m not sure I know what that means. Alt-outlaws? Hmm. I do know that these heroes of the No Depression scene have an uncanny ability to match simple, emotionally charged lyrics with simple, emotionally charged hooks and as such mirror the best of what traditional country has to offer. I also know that the Bottle Rockets can be a straight-up Southern rock band the likes of which you just don’t see very often. Hearken back to the mid-’80s when the Georgia Satellites were getting tied down with chains and you’ll get the picture. Add a sardonic dash of Wynn Stewart-style heartbreak and a pinch of Skynyrd’s bad-boy attitude and that’s the Bottle Rockets in a nutshell. Before the Drive-By Truckers came along and stole some thunder, these guys were the unquestioned kings of the trailer-park boogie. “She’s Smoking 100’s Alone,” essentially a male’s answer to Patsy Cline’s “Three Cigarettes In the Ashtray,” will make country purists moist with glee, while numbers like “Gas Girl” rock like it was 1975. Every now and again they’ll even dish up a howling, banjo-driven storm of pure Appalachian meanness. They’re at the Hi-Tone Café with Jason Ringenberg on Saturday, August 11th.
Regular readers know I’ve never had a good thing to say about contemporary country music. That was only because Dwight Yoakam (the Anti-Garth) hadn’t made it to town yet. Yoakam may crank out the pop-pablum to keep steak on the table, but he’s one of the few celebs of mainstream country who hasn’t forgotten where his roots are planted. Not since Hank Williams moaned “Lost Highway” have vocals sounded so impossibly lonesome and desperate. Yoakam’s “Sad Side of Town” and “Heartaches Are Free” are two of the best pedal-steel-heavy, cry-in-your-tequila recordings made since George Jones left Mercury back before the flood. Yoakam will be at Horseshoe Casino on Thursday, August 9th. — Chris Davis
