Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Our Spring Into Summer Fest Preview and Picks: Pale Hearts, Naomi What? , and The Regrets


Readers, it's Wiggins Day in LFK, so raise your PBR (or one of those nasty bologna-tasting Smoke on the Wheat beers at Free State) and celebrate the savior of next season's basketball team!

But most of our attention is on music this week.  The annual LFK rite-of-summer known as Spring Into Summer Fest hits the Replay on Saturday and of course we have some rather loud opinions.  Last year the fest brought in the terrific KC Afro-beat /funk collective Hearts of Darkness in an effort to transform the outdoor area into a huge dance party but... local scenesters responded by not arriving until 11:30 or so, long after the outdoor part of the Fest had wrapped up.  So this year's approach seems to be to avoid risk and mainly offer up a bunch of the usual LFK offenders, both early and late, though our guess is that scenesters will still arrive around 11:30 and miss favorites such as Y[our] Fri[end].    Visit the FB event page here.  So far, only 22 people are going.  This ain't exactly Bonnaroo (but we suppose that's a good thing).

One question:  where in the hell is Fourth of July on the line-up?  It's just not summer without them.

Outdoor picks: 

1) Pale Hearts:  We're hyped to see the Pale Hearts gang rocking the outdoor stage early in the evening (7:15).  The title track of their new record Hollowtown features one of Chip's favorite lines of the year so far, delivered in Rob's trademark howl: "And you're fucking a hole through your phonebook again."  "Breakheart Mambo" sounds like a lost track from Lynch's Wild at Heart and might even get a few drunk/stoned scenesters to grind around on each other a little.  And, dark though it is, "High Plains Disko" (great title) gives off a Talking Heads-vibe that would make the crowd bounce exuberantly if scenesters were capable of such behavior.  Brush up on the new stuff via Bandcamp here .

 Hollowtown cover art

2)  Naomi What?   A Naomi What? appearance is always welcome in our book.  The name alone makes us laugh, and it's one of the few projects containing Rooftop Vigilante members that doesn't leave us deaf (in fact, it's acoustic and strummy and quite easy on the ears).  We're not sure if the band ever evolved online beyond a Myspace page (check it out here ) but there's a sort of retro element to Myspace now that makes it almost hip again!  So we recommend you revisit Myspace for the first time in years and listen to "Tonguing the Bird" and (our favorite) the very sweet "Can I Be Your Butler?"  Catch them at 8:50 on the outdoor stage.

Indoor Pick:

The Regrets:  The big treat of the evening for LFK rock historians is a performance by The Regrets, the legendary post-Vitreous Humor project of Danny Pound, Brad Allen, and Dan Benson.  They recently played the MOTM fest, but we're guessing most of their LFK fans didn't pay big bucks (by scenester standards) and trek to KC.  So this hometown reunion should be packed...assuming the fans can last till the 11:50 showtime.   Our friends at I Heart Local Music have a great piece on the reunited Regrets here .

The schedule: 

OUTSIDE!

6:30 Y(our) Fri(end)
7:15 Pale Hearts
8:00 The Basement
8:50 Naomi What?
9:30 Approach
10:15 G-Train/Approach DJ set!

INSIDE!

10:20 Dry Bonnet
11:00 Up The Academy
11:50 The Regrets
12:45 Mouthbreathers


And here's the big poster in the Replay window.  We love how the Replay defines "all day" as beginning at 6:30 pm.


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