Looking for something to do with your Thursday night? Need a math rock fix? The Music and Entertainment Industry Students Association (University of New Haven chapter) is launching a math rock showcase tonight at the University of New Haven’s German Club. Even if you don’t necessarily need a math rock fix (or if you don’t really know exactly what math rock is), you should catch this bill.
The lineup is far-reaching and varied, and sees veterans of the game sharing the stage with fresher talent. Giraffes? Giraffes! is a duo from Northampton, Massachusetts, and their juxtaposition of calculated twitching and expansive nigh post rock movements lifts the genre to rarely mined potential. Like Nomads (West Warwick, RI) is a five piece that takes the traditional tapped guitar, stumbling rhythms, and stabs of dissonance, and adds warbling synths and lo-fi noodling – it’s a rather psychedelic angle, and it works. Zona Mexicana (Purchase, NY) is a fast-moving onslaught of frenetic meter and kicks, side by side with layers of in-your-face vocals – something like math punk. Good Citizens, a duo local to Connecticut, lets the tempo push and pull while keeping an incredibly tight guitar-drum chemistry; Full of Birdy (MA and RI) shares some of the same territory, but the thorny, "mathy" sections are dense and the open parts have an almost Primus-like twang to them. Shrk Wk might have some of the densest movements to be found on the bill, and is probably the band most likely to cause a head banging-induced concussion.
The showcase is free, by the way. So get down there at 7:30pm and see where some of the new voices in math rock are pushing the genre.
There are a lot of bands and some are traveling far, so the line-up may change only slightly (from bottom to top):
Giraffes? Giraffes!
Zona Mexicana
Like Nomads
Good Citizens
Shrk Wk
Full of Birdy
– The Deli Staff