[music]
Waking up
Times Run 2/7 - 2/13
Cinemas, Live Music & Theater
Inside Llewyn Davis Nighty at 7 & 9
Dirt Nap avoids Americana pitfalls
Philomena Nightly at 7 • No Show Sat (2/8),
Wed (2/12) or Thur (2/13) Oscar Nominated Shorts - Animated Fri (2/7) & Mon (2/10) at 9 Thur (2/13) at 7
Oscar Nominated Shorts - Live Action Sun (2/9), Tue (2/11) & Thur (2/13) at 9
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Even in its name, Dead Winter Carpenters captures that kind of Northwest Americana sound best suited for frosty nights sipping hard liquor with friends in some dimly lit but cozy-as-hell watering hole. The Lake Tahoebased band must feel at home in icy Montana, because the musicians come here often, even in the worst of winter, sometimes playing five or six shows across the state. The band appeals to a broad audience of bluegrass, country, oldtime and jam fans, and the quintet doesn’t delve into any one of those genres enough to pigeonhole itself beyond the vague and meaningless “Americana” tag. Forget I even brought up that annoying Dead Winter Carpenters genre term, though, lest it dissuade you from The band shares songwriting credits, but it’s the two listening to Dead Winter Carpenters’ new sixsong EP, Dirt Nap. The EP is a nicely honed collection songs Daines wrote for the EP that provide the most filled with crisp fiddle and thumping bass, rich gang complexity. Besides “Easy Sleep,” he wrote “Colorado choruses and driving guitar riffs. These songs feature Wildfire,” which he performs as a duet with fiddler Jenni the usual country themes of whiskey and outlaws, but Charles. When Charles sings, “With a fire running it’s all repackaged into new narratives that somehow through your veins/ stepping in and out of time./ Stars don’t feel derivative. Songs about robbing and bootleg- come crashing and exploding/ as you let your barrels fly,” ging roll along like a smooth but familiar belly-warming it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but the mystery keeps nightcap. you hooked. The song also intertwines a counterintuitive A few songs, like the deceptively up-beat “Easy mixture of genres—elements of classic rock, Celtic, psySleep,” have a lyrical edge the others don’t. Guitarist chedelic and Texas country—that proves how wide open Bryan Daines sounds like he’s happy, even if the words that “Americana” genre can be. Rather than drowning in indicate a harsher reality, as in, “Sleeping comes real easy a generic style, the Dead Winter Carpenters take full adwhen you have no bills to pay/ and when no one gets in vantage of wide boundaries, and it pays off. (Erika your way./ But sleeping/ don’t come easy/ when the one Fredrickson) you want to be around/ only wants you nowhere to be Dead Winter Carpenters plays the Top Hat found.” Wed., Feb. 12, at 10 PM. $5.
John Butler Trio, Flesh & Blood I’ve heard of a guitar being played with a violin bow. I’ve heard of a saw being played as an instrument. But I’ve not heard of a guitar being played with a saw, though I swear that’s what happens at the end of “Cold Wind,” the third track on John Butler Trio’s Flesh & Blood. It’s the most interesting detail on the new release. The album’s cover art is a raw collage of saws and other noisemakers, plus a fretboard hangs on the wall, dismembered from its body. The closer the trio gets to the danger and deconstruction that image promises, the better it gets. Still, a lot of Flesh & Blood is in a safer register. There’s a tug-of-war between the John Butler that picks away at an acoustic guitar, singing perhaps a bit too earnestly, and the John Butler that wields an elec-
tric guitar and spouts swagger. The former is John Mayer-esque, the latter delivers a style not unlike Anthony Kiedis at the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ peak. Lead single “Only One” exemplifies the safe approach, with a catchy rhythm and a saccharine lyrical hook where he sings, “To me you are the only one.” Skip backward one track, though, and you’ll find the centerpiece of the album, “Blame It On Me.” It’s a long, funky piece that mostly leaves vocals behind after the two-minute mark. As Butler lets his guitar rumble, purr, skronk, stutter and shriek through the rest of the song, you wonder why he’d do it any other way.(Kevin Dupzyk) The John Butler Trio plays the Wilma Wed., Feb. 12. Doors at 7 PM, show at 8. $26 at Rockin Rudy’s.
Dum Dum Girls, Too True Dum Dum Girls were in danger of getting repetitive, and the sun was in danger of getting kind of hot. When I first heard “It Only Takes One Night,” the band’s numbed, reverberating pop sounded like the early ’60s drowning in a swimming pool, and I liked it. Then I heard it again and again, through two albums’ worth of variations, and I became concerned. Kristin Welchez (alias Dee Dee Penny) evidently got concerned, too. On “Evil Blooms,” the second track of her daring new LP Too True, she sings “Why be good? Be beautiful and sad;/ it’s all you’ve ever had.” There’s a bitter defiance at work there, and
[24] Missoula Independent • February 6–February 13, 2014
Welchez mines it to satisfying effect on the rest of the album. Too True retains all the stylistic hallmarks of earlier Dum Dum Girls except for the narrow composition. It is less reverb pop and more new wave, bearing the same resemblance to the previous two albums as Siouxsie and the Banshees bore to the Ramones. It still sounds blown-out and dirty, but it is lyrically and tonally more sophisticated in a way that acknowledges the wider world rather than building a bubble within it. Hardcore fans may be disappointed, but they will also get a breath of fresh air. (Dan Brooks)