Warsaw Vices

“Beer-soaked power pop from Chicago.”

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UNIVERSE CONTEST

It’s rare for a band to be great and be the first band its members are in. Not to say that the bands that the guys from Universe Contest have been in weren’t damn good, but something is going on with this incarnation that never quite clicked completely in the way it does now. The press has been universally (pardon the pun) positive in its praise of the band. Fans in the crowd have been rowdy, smiling and singing along, and the band has found itself in a position of having multiple songwriters that can bring something to the table, creating an infectious sound that varies from discord to harmony within the same song in a way that always keeps the listener enthralled.

The lineup includes Tim Carr (vocals, guitar), Joe Humpal (vocals, guitar), Brenton Neville (drums, vocals), John Freidel (keys,vocals) and Bonehart (bass, vocals). They’ve been compared to Modest Mouse, MGMT and Dismemberment Plan, yet a most recent review said “Take away the Modest Mouse overhang and they’re harder to pin down. As the name implies, they’re spacey, but not shoegaze spacey or Bowie spacey. Spacey like a group of Midwestern hillbillies who got ahold of a stack of Popular Science magazines and figured out how to build their own spaceship from abandoned grain silos, Case tractors parts and the cockpit from a hollowed-out ’73 Maverick. I can see them now sitting on the launchpad in their overalls, their hippie hair sticking out of their gold-painted football helmets. 10.9.8.7…” (Lazy-I, Omaha)

GABE LIEBOWITZ (from Dastardly)

The marriage between old west folk and the ambiguous genre of “indie rock” makes the songs of Dastardly a palatable playlist for those who aren’t normally attracted to cowboy crooners. In fact, by the sound of the screaming girls heard at Subterranean, we’re pretty sure the band was responsible for converting quite a few pop princesses into banjo loving broads. Experimental enough to feel fresh but traditional enough to feel familiar even to first timers, Dastardly is band that asserted itself as notable early in the game and now can enjoy the steady rise to local fame they’re guaranteed. —reviewsic.comDastardly is a Chicago outfit that plays americana music with just the right ratio of “sticky-sweet” to “fuckin’ shit up.” Every note is deliberate and controlled, but just barely masks an urgent and immediate sense of existential, frantic terror that must be slowly driving them mad. ..-am3r1cank1ds.tumblr.com..Their indie-folk, Americana sounds is perfect for a 2010 Hoedown (meaning PBR and cigarettes). The band has no shortage of instruments including lap steel, dobro, or accordian. Their tunes have a top side of bluegrass, finger-lickin’ pickin’, but there’s always a seemingly modern undercurrent whether it’s the echo-y lead guitar line of “Excercises In Self Loathing” or the big, tribal beat outro of “Brief Thoughts On Death” —loudlooppress.com

DOUBLEDOWNNATION

The entropy of the universe is always increasing. Clutter…clutter, an ever increasing clutter. A cacophony of being, striving, yearning. Always for more, more, more- I just can’t get enough in the background. The spirit of the times. Whirling, impossible to capture. Impossible to stop.

We double down on sound. Dripping with the grease of unstoppable, unfaphomable noise. A clutter of meaning, ideas…and blue people with small faces. We double down.

We came to Chicago when Jesus left Chicago. We are here now. We double down on now. Zeitgeist&WeltSchmertz. We increase the entropy of our little corner.

We take nothing and offer even less. Come bare and leave bare. Barely touched and yet, somehow transformed