RVA Shows You Must See This Week: April 26 – May 2
FEATURED SHOW
Saturday, April 29, 1 PM
WRIR 18th Anniversary Party, feat. Rikki Rakki, Ruth Good, Jonathan Brown, DuctTape Jesus, Armagideon Time, Toward Space, Pay Rent Brass Band @ Hardywood – Free!
2005 was a watershed year in Richmond’s underground cultural scene. I didn’t really realize it at the time — I was going to lots of basement shows, playing in a hardcore band, and worrying about turning 30. But this past month has made it really obvious to me: first, Gallery 5 celebrated their 18th birthday with a blowout First Friday celebration, and now, only three weeks afterward, WRIR is holding their own 18th birthday celebration over at Hardywood. These two institutions of Richmond’s music and arts underground getting their start in the same spring month back in 2005 is a pretty wild thing to contemplate, but it is nonetheless true. And that fact in and of itself calls for a celebration.
As celebrations go, this Saturday afternoon/evening throwdown at Hardywood certainly lives up to the occasion. Starting at 1 pm with WRIR DJs spinning the tunes as you enjoy choice craft brews and hobnob with your fellow Richmond music lovers, things will kick into high gear at 3 pm as the live music gets rolling… and doesn’t stop until well after the sun has gone down. There’s a veritable murderer’s row of Richmond musicians and bands on this bill, and it’s topped off by the one and only Rikki Rakki, a beloved indie rock combo who’ve been heating things up with multiple advance singles heralding the release of their debut full-length, Breaking Skin, coming this summer. From the melancholy girl group lament of “Crying In the Uber” to the slow-burn alt-rock garage stomp of the just-released title track (which we premiered last week, ICYMI), they’re setting the stage for one of the year’s major releases, and we can all get hyped for its impending arrival by catching their evening-capping set at WRIR’s 18th Anniversary Party — where we just might hear some as-yet-unreleased new jams.
There are a lot of other excellent groups on this bill to get excited about. For example, Ruth Good, the band of the Parker brothers, JP and Wes, whose most recent release, a single called “Frigidaire,” finds them moving from the glowing indie melodies of their 2020 Citrus City EP Haunt into a more angst-ridden punk-ish territory. Was it just a one-off? Their set will surely give us some clues. Other treats include the distorted digital hip hop of DuctTape Jesus, the raging crust-punk of Armagideon Time, Toward Space’s infectious bubblegum garage-punk, talented singer-songwriter Jonathan Brown, and some brass jams from No BS!-related jazz combo Pay Rent Brass Band. All that plus an opportunity to offer support to WRIR’s next 18 years… AND to party at Hardywood all day Saturday? For FREE?!? Seriously, there’s no excuse — you gotta be here.
Wednesday, April 26, 6 PM
Dominion Energy Jazz Cafe, feat. Taylor Barnett with The VCU Jazz Studies Student/Faculty Combo @ Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts – Free!
Wednesday, like the other two early weekdays of every week, can be tough for live music fans. Sometimes there just ain’t that much to do. But if you look in the right places, you can always find some great sounds going down — you just might have to step outside the usual haunts. That’s what we’ll be doing this week as we take an after-work jaunt over to the VMFA for the Dominion Energy Jazz Cafe, which makes up for its less-than-thrilling corporate sponsorship by being a free opportunity to hear some excellent jazz sounds in the middle of every week.
This time around, they’re offering a set from Taylor Barnett, who is best known around the scene as a member of No BS! Brass Band, but works by day in VCU’s Jazz department, teaching up-and-coming young talents the ins and outs of playing jazz full-time. He’ll be leading The VCU Jazz Studies Student/Faculty Combo at this gig, which also includes saxophonist JC Kuhl, best known around the scene for his work with Agents Of Good Roots and Fight The Big Bull. The other members of the combo — which includes Danny Dupes on trombone, Minjee Jang on piano, Aniyah Rickson on bass, and Charles Brown on drums — are presumably all students, but if they came up under this kind of tutelage, we can be sure that all of them are top-quality talents. So hey, let’s all take in some jazz this Wednesday evening, and mellow out a little to help get through the week. You won’t regret it.
Thursday, April 27, 7 PM
Intercourse, Terror Cell, Skincrawler @ Another Round Bar And Grill – $10
OK, that’s enough upbeat mellowness. It’s time to embrace doom. No, not doom metal — your own doom. And really, all of our dooms. (Is “dooms” grammatically correct? Does it pluralize like “deer”? I dunno, let’s move on.) Intercourse, a four-piece metallic hardcore band from Connecticut, are forcing all of us to reckon with the bleakness of our own lives on their upcoming album Halo Castration Institute — at least if the first two advance singles are any indication. Veering from the apocalyptic sludge of opener “Where Losers Go To Die” to the raging chaos of “I Need Saturday Off So I Can Go Play A Teenager’s Basement” (everyone who’s ever been in a DIY hardcore band is feeling their ears burn right now), the brief taste of this album Intercourse have already provided is enough to make their full set when they hit Another Round this Thursday night a very exciting prospect — especially if you love dark, crushing, downbeat metallic hardcore. And god knows I do.
Intercourse will be joined on this bill by two Richmond bands who are ragers in their own right. Terror Cell really put their stamp on the entire city when they released their debut LP, Caustic Light, last year. Its heavy, chaotic approach to midtempo metallic hardcore gives it a frenetic feel that is gloriously interrupted at least once per song by an absolutely crushing breakdown. It’s all a recipe for live mayhem, so you can fully expect that, when these guys hit the stage, it’s sure to be a mosh-tastic good time. As for Skincrawler, they’re a pretty new band on the local scene, but with only two EPs to their name thus far, they’ve already made it clear that they’ve got a lot of talent to offer. Chaotic grindcore with strong death metal influence and a slightly unhinged edge is their stock in trade, and I for one can’t wait to hear more. Which is exactly why we all need to make it out to Another Round for this one. It’s sure to be a banger.
Friday, April 28, 7:30 PM
Gritty City Presents: Die Today, Eradicant, DuctTape Jesus, Johnny Ciggs @ Get Tight Lounge – $1o in advance, $13 day of show (order tickets HERE)
One good dose of metal deserves another… but that might be a surprising thing to hear me say when I’m starting to talk about a show presented by Gritty City, one of the most well-respected hip hop record labels this city’s ever produced. Nonetheless, it’s true — this show finds Gritty City label head and talented veteran MC Johnny Ciggs teaming up not only with fellow rapper DuctTape Jesus, but also with two local death metal bands for a bill that both paints an inspiring picture of scene unity across genres but also has massive crossover potential. Who wouldn’t want to get in on the ground floor for that?
Let’s start by talking about Johnny Ciggs, who really should need no introduction to Richmonders who pay any attention to underground music. His most recent work includes collaborative albums with two different superstar Richmond producers: Youngblood, with Profound 79, and The Great White Hype, with Ant The Symbol — both of which dropped in the past year. He stays busy, too, so no doubt there’ll be more coming before we know it. DuctTape Jesus is similarly prolific, dropping seven singles in 2022, all of which feature his signature combo of woozy, digitally-overdriven beats and fascinating, unorthodox rhymes. There’s a reason he’s getting a lot of attention on the local scene. Show up at this show and you’ll find out. As for the metal half of this bill, Die Today are relative newcomers locally, with only a few songs released, but carry the weight and atmosphere of a much more seasoned band, managing to split the difference between prime Celtic Frost and prime Slayer, with a fair dose of the infamous Gehenna mixed in. Eradicant go in a more deathly direction on 2021 full-length Hidden Symmetry, but they keep it old-school death by focusing on speed and killer riffage that’ll rip your head right off. It all adds up to an evening of awesomeness in multiple genres, one that everyone who has any interest in either metal or hip hop should jump at the chance to attend.
Saturday, April 29, 7 PM
Fairweather, Liars Academy, Rough Age @ Gallery 5 – $15 (order tickets HERE)
Being an adult is weird. Not at first, because everything you do as an adult — getting your first real job, renting your first place — feels new and exciting. But then it just kinda cruises along, and before you know it, something that feels like it was just the other day is damn near two decades in the past. That’s how I feel when I contemplate the fact that Fairweather’s debut album, If They Move… Kill Them is over 20 years old. I remember when this DC band felt like a great new addition to a movement that was just taking off at the time — pop-punk bands that simultaneously had an excellent melodic sense and could write killer choruses, but also understood and could utilize all of the techniques that made hardcore great. Their two early-00s LPs captured that aesthetic perfectly, and stand alongside the best work bands like Saves the Day and The Movielife were doing at the time. Since those days, though, Fairweather’s presence on the scene has been intermittent at best. They came back with a self-titled third LP in 2014, but even that is — eep — nearly a decade old now.
That’s why I’m really glad to see Fairweather active and playing shows again. They haven’t been the most prolific band over the past two decades, but unlike a lot of their peers, they’ve never made any embarrassing missteps. And therefore, we can all rest assured that when they hit the Gallery 5 stage this Saturday night, all the songs they play are gonna rule, just as much as they did when we first heard them one or two decades ago. What also rules is that Fairweather are coming through town with Liars Academy in tow. This Baltimore band dates from a similar era, and in the early 00s, they released two excellent LPs of their own, which stirred hardcore energy into a musical pot brimming with emo intensity and alt-rock hooks. Their recent return feels entirely out of nowhere but very very welcome, especially since it comes with a brand new LP, Ghosts, released 19 years after their last one and every bit as excellent as you’d have expected it to be if it was released in 2006. Both of these bands are sure-fire hitmakers, and having them back in Richmond for the first time in at least a decade (closer to 20 years for Liars Academy) is the sort of treat that might even help you forget, for a moment, the way time keeps slipping by us.
Sunday, April 30, 6:30 PM
The Garden, TSOL @ The National – $28 (order tickets HERE)
At first, this show simultaneously caught my attention and made me a little leery. After all, here’s TSOL, a legendary first wave hardcore band whose later dips into darker, more gothic punk textures made them darlings of the LA deathrock scene of the mid-80s, and they’re opening for a band called The Garden who are wearing black-and-white makeup in their press photos. Is this a case of a band I love opening for a band that I’m not gonna like at all? Well, thankfully all my fears were unfounded. Because as soon as I put on LA two-piece The Garden’s latest album, Horseshit on Route 66, I realized that this was something else entirely. You see, the Garden are a bass-drums duo made up of twin brothers who play rip-roaring old-school hardcore punk with a ton of energy and a devil-may-care attitude. They come from a strong Los Angeles punk lineage that unites quite a few bands who aren’t quite hardcore, and aren’t quite goth, but integrate those vibes into their old-school sound. Think DI, The Adolescents, Agent Orange, and of course… TSOL, who are actually the perfect band to accompany The Garden on their latest tour.
The notorious maniacs of TSOL have had a checkered career over the 40 or so years they’ve been a band, first winning acclaim in the early days of hardcore with their True Sounds Of Liberty EP and Dance With Me LP, both from 1981. They started out playing fast, melodic punk rock, slowly integrating the more gothic vibes of their mid-80s material (Weathered Statues and Beneath The Shadows, both from 1982). After that, they went through a whole saga that’s too long to tell here, but suffice it to say that TSOL returned to action with their original lineup in the early 00s, and have since released four albums that stand alongside their earliest material in terms of quality and style; Beneath The Shadows-era keyboardist Greg Kuehn returned in 2005, and their most recent album, 2017’s The Trigger Complex, integrates the moodier tones of their gothic period with the darkly melodic hardcore punk of their earliest material in a manner that should please fans new and old. The Garden apparently have a really young fan base, while a lot of TSOL fans are middle-aged or older, so this show should be a great mix of all generations, uniting to celebrate that good ol’ punk rock rage that never goes out of style. You won’t want to miss a minute of it.
Monday, May 1, 7 PM
Front Line Assembly, Severed Skies, Pain Generator @ Richmond Music Hall at Capital Ale House – $25 in advance, $30 day of show (order tickets HERE)
Here’s one that should get all the old-school rivetheads to leave their bunkers and come out to dance. Front Line Assembly are a legendary band in the annals of the industrial subgenre known as EBM, or electronic body music. This stuff is driven primarily by synthesized sounds and pounding programmed beats, but instead of going for the upbeat happy bounce of mainstream dance music, it creates a dark, spooky feel through the use of harsh synth stabs, aggressive gloomy vocals, and tempos that are too fast to groove to, instead pushing toward the same sort of pogoing and headbanging that one might see at a punk and metal show.
Front Line Assembly are titans in the world of EBM, having spun off from an early incarnation of the legendary Skinny Puppy in order to join a scene dominated by other classic industrial groups like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb. Like a lot of industrial bands in the early 90s, Front Line Assembly experimented with adding distorted guitars into the mix, but these days they are back to their pure industrial roots, with founding frontman Bill Leeb and longtime keyboard player and programmer Rhys Fulber being the only full-time members of the band. Their touring group is slightly expanded but still devoted to pure pulse-pounding EBM, and will undoubtedly get Richmond Music Hall in an uproar when they hit the stage. Richmond darkwavers Severed Skin and the ominously named local industrial noise group Pain Generator will get things started on this one, making for a full evening of dark heavy sounds. Polish up your black Docs and get stoked for this one.
Tuesday, May 2, 7 PM
Felt Out, kissyourfriends, Ethanol @ The Camel – $10 (order tickets HERE)
Tuesday is always a bit of a challenge when I’m closing out the column each week, but shows like this one make it a breeze. Felt Out is a duo from Austin, Texas who bring an underground, indie aesthetic to music that is undeniably pop. Their brand new sophomore LP, Until I’m Light, finds them working in similar territory to that of Imogen Heap, or Tegan And Sara’s more elaborate albums, mixing AutoTuned vocals and off-kilter samples into layered songs that rise to the top based on their unforgettable choruses. Fans of Muna’s recent work are sure to find a lot to love here — and as a big fan of Muna’s last LP, I say this from personal experience.
As for our openers, kissyourfriends is certainly an interesting thing to name a band. Speaking simply for myself, I’ve always found actually following that advice to cause more drama than it’s worth, but your mileage may vary. As for this band, which hails from the Michigan city of Ypsilanti, they have a more acoustic sound than that of Felt Out, but display a similar talent for pop melodies. Theirs are closer to the Mac DeMarco end of the spectrum, as shown on 2020 LP HYGM and last year’s Gently EP (and if those names sound familiar to you, you might have known this band previously under the moniker Daddy And the Long Legs). Kissyourfriends should certainly appeal to anyone among you who closely follows the release schedule of Citrus City Records. Indeed, Richmond-based opener Ethanol released an album of woozy alt-pop on Citrus City back at the end of 2021. So it all comes full circle! Even more reason to spend your Tuesday night taking in this show.
Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers -– this week’s column has obviously already been written): rvamustseeshows@gmail.com
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