[music]
Rich flavors Missoula’s Butter release serene album Butter has always held a mysterious role in Missoula’s music scene, and not just for its lyrics. The band’s lineup changes seem frequent, while performances around town are the opposite. But from time to time, the group offers up a splendid studio snapshot of its stripped-down, vulnerable indie folk. Field Field Lake Lake is an impressive follow-up to 2011’s Removable Beast, full of shadowy poetry set to stark instrumentation and enriched by harmonies that blend together as smooth as, well, butter. Field Field Lake Lake keeps a steady, melancholic pace throughout the album, with little variation to rhythm and tempo. Rather than making for a boring listen, the seven songs weave together perfectly and wash over the listener like the warm evening rain of a summer storm. The sparse piano, guitar and violin swells serve to fill the aural gaps around Lisena Brown and Hermina Harold’s strong voices–not strong in the bluesy, Janis Joplin sense, but strong in a deceptively serene sense
that could bring a grown man to his knees in transfixed adoration. This music is simple but thoughtful, and it works with considerable charm. (Jed Nussbaum) Butter, Nate Heg yi and I Hate Your Girlfriend play the VFW Sat., April 20, at 9 PM. $2.
Captured! By Robots There are bands where a human being is forced to sing with guitar- and drum-playing robots who have pulled out his eyeballs and intestines, and then there is everything else. I would describe Captured! By Robots as a parody of that first kind of band. Singer JBOT—legally, if not better known, as Jay Vance, a San Francisco musician who once played in the Blue Meanies and Skankin’ Pickle—claims that he built the robots because no humans wanted to be in a band with him, and then they eviscerated him and forced him to go on tour and obey. I suspect that’s a gimmick. It would appear that Vance is actually operating the robots himself for our entertainment, al-
though you will not see him admit it on stage. The unofficial motto of C!BR, shrieked periodically in a sort of Crypt Keeper voice by DRMBOT 0110 is “You will suffer.” That’s true, partly because of Vance’s flair for the grotesque and partly because a bunch of animatronic robots have difficulty playing exactly in time. It’s as if punk rock developed entirely at Chuck E. Cheese, which is to say that it’s A) shrill and lurching and B) wonderful. Captured! By Robots is a 17-year document of one man’s insanity. You will not see its like again. (Dan Brooks) Captured! By Robots and Needlecraft play the Palace Fri., April 19, at 9 PM. $8.
The Moustache Bandits There’s a real swell cowboy bar outside of Bozeman called Stacey’s. It’s a cowboy bar because actual cowboys/girls frequent and run the place. I found myself there a few moons ago feeling glad I remembered my flannel shirt and not-so-skinny jeans. Yet I was still an outsider, an imposter; I still actually smell manure when I visit a ranch. Bozeman’s The Moustache Bandits reminds me of this feeling, because the band plays country for city kids. There’s some fine fiddlin’ going on in the tracks Moustache Bandits has posted on its Reverbnation page. It’s a necessary distraction from the vocal misogyny, however ironic it’s supposed to be, with lines like “I’m gonna bend you over your dead
daddy’s grave.” The guitars are more like backing tracks while the drums keep the tempos high. So it’s really a fiddle and a guy twanging his heart out—about being horny when he’s hungover. It’s outlaw country, so they say, which means there should be mud on their boots and blood on their hands. But being outlaw for the sake of outlaw tends to cross the line from edgy into goofy. For example: “If whiskey were titties I’d be drunk all night.” Still, you get the feeling this band is just trying to have fun in an unabashedly non-country way. (Brooks Johnson) The Moustache Bandits and the Red Carpet Devils play Stage 112 Fri., April 19, at 9 PM. $5.
Thee Oh Sees, Floating Coffin Thee Oh Sees’ latest album is as weird as its cover art. The kaleidoscope of strawberries and fangs is both succulent and startling: kind of like heartburn for your eyes. It’s a similar kind of guilty pleasure for your ears, if you have the patience. Floating Coffin is experimental rock in same vein as Broken Social Scene, with lengthy instrumental segments, unexpected bleeps, feedback and mood swings. But Thee Oh Sees takes that formula and puts it on acid. The album is simultaneously dreamlike and as in-your-face as an alarm clock when you’re hungover. It’s certainly more cohesive than Putrifiers II, which came out only seven months ago.
The tracks flow into one another better and the album is more top-to-bottom listenable. Yet while Floating Coffin is never atonal or off-putting, it doesn’t try too hard to impress anyone but its creators. Tracks like “Toe Cutter – Thumb Buster” and “Night Crawler” bring back a certain fuzzy crunch I thought we left at the end of the last century. The lo-fi feel to the vocals is great, but lead man John Dwyer doesn’t seem interested in bringing us to any real end or destination with his songs. Apparently it’s all about the trip, man. (Brooks Johnson) arts@missoulanews.com
missoulanews.com • April 18 – April 25, 2013
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