Rejoice, music lovers, because this weekend offers a bounty of shows to choose from — so many that, unless you know a mystical way to bend the laws of time and space so that you can be in more than one place at the same time, you’ll probably need to make some difficult choices.
Friday night, you can catch Tōth and local favorite Dominic Lavoie at the Sun Tiki Studios. Tōth is a new project of Brooklyn multi-instrumentalist songwriter Alex Toth, known for collaborating and writing with, among others Brooklyn dance-pop favorites Rubblebucket, Cuddle Magic and others. His most recent release, the DEATH EP, dropped at the end of October.
The songs on the DEATH EP, Tōth says on his Bandcamp page, were written in 2019 and 2020 when someone important in his life, a family member, was dying of a disease he himself is in recovery from—alcoholism. And while that may sound like a bit of downer, the fact is, the tunes are all pop gems that belie the somber nature of their meaning. It’s a great record, which bodes well for the show.
And if you’ve not seen Dominic Lavoie before — he did a fantastic set at Porchfest back in September — then this show might be just the ticket for you, because he’s a talented musician with a solid catalog of great songs to draw on.
Also on Friday, over at The Apohodian, you can catch Clay Camero, Walt McClements, and Colby Nathan.
Camero’s most recent release, Resurrection, is a powerful, haunting work of pyschedelic Americana, a concept album of sorts, that, “begins on a prison ship from Ireland to Australia, takes you on a ride in Clay’s Camaro on the back roads of Maine, leads you through dreamscapes in the dark swaying forests of LOVE to help you find Freedom driving down the back of a memory.” This is gonna be a helluva show, and the Apohodian is great venue for this band.
McClements is “ambient accordianist” outta LA – not Lewiston/Auburn, but that other LA out in SoCal – who’s latest release has been getting some great reviews.
“I hope the essence of the record conveys the beauty and wonder of secret worlds,” Los Angeles composer Walt McClements says on his Bandcamp page, discussing the role of subcultural societies on his new LP A Hole In The Fence. Primarily created with an accordion, the album takes notes from contemporary classical, drone, and electronic music. “I think of the record as a fragmented narrative connecting threads of the somewhat hidden worlds I’ve travelled through my life, from underground music and punk communities to train hopping and gay cruising grounds.”
And if you’re going to be around northern New Hampshire on Friday night, go catch Portland’s own anti-genre indie pranksters SeepeopleS with psychedelic roots rockers Lucid Elephants at the Loading Dock in Littleton, NH. The Loading Dock is volunteer-run, all-ages, flexible performance space that brings together art, music and performance in the North Country of New Hampshire, and this show is gonna be a rager.
Saturday offers more of the same.
Saturday afternoon, you can catch Portland lo-fi grungefolk duo Plague Dad at the East Ender, where they’ll be playing as part of the Winter Holiday Market down on Middle Street from 2pm-4pm.
Get your Christmas tree, do some holiday shopping and buy local – and best of all, it’s free!
Saturday night, the Space Gallery on Congress has a great show: Greasy Grass, Junesevere, and Ossalot.
Greasy Grass is a psychedelic pop band from Portland, that plays a, “shifting combination of unbridled psychedelia, vintage saccharine softness, hypnotic garage groove, karaoke bar melodrama, razor sharpness, effortless passivity, warm electronics, changing structures, and film score grandiosity.”
Ossalot, on their Bandcamp pages, says they play, “some moany, punky indie poppy garage dream shit,” and likes to, “switch it up and experiment” – so make of that what you will. Really, you probably should just go to the show and check ’em out for yourself.
Over at the Sun Tiki, it’s a night of homegrown power pop punk rock with three local outfits: Borderlines, (playing their first hometown performance since February 2020) along with Repeating Cloud recording artist Crunchcoat, and The Gubs.
Loud, sweaty, powerpoppunkrock action – what else could you possibly want on a Saturday night?
And if you missed SeepeopleS at the Loading Dock on Friday night, you can catch them Saturday at the Press Room in Portsmouth, NH, where they’re opening for Faith No More keyboardist Roddy Bottum’s latest project, Man On Man.
The whole weekend’s gonna rock, from start to finish. See you out there.
ThatPortlandSound 