We hope you enjoyed that extra day of rest as much as we did. Besides, you're going to need it if you intend on spending an entire day basking in local sounds with us this weekend. The RFT Music Showcase 2013 is this Saturday -- get the exhaustive coverage of all the nominees and come see 50+ of them down on Washington Ave. Besides the showcase, plenty of notable shows worth checking out follow, including stops from James Murphy, Gogol Bordello, Alkaline Trio and more.
Note: Though we wish we could, we can't feature every great show happening in town in just one measly post. Look for plenty more recommendations this Friday in our weekend show post, and peruse the St. Louis concert calendar for more ideas any time.
Did we leave something significant out? There's a chance it didn't make it onto our radar! Send your show tips anytime to [email protected].
Breakmouth Annie Tuesday, May 28, 8 p.m. w/ Ink and Sweat, The Haddonfields @ Lemmons By Jimmy Eberle From "New Breakmouth Annie Record On The Horizon From Throwing Things Records:" The clock is counting down to midnight on a Friday night at Lemmon's. After some knob-fiddling and shot/water retrieval from the bar, the band begins its set, as some more friends and fans run back in after finishing their cigarettes outside. The next 25 or so minutes become a blur of head-nodding, uncontrollable leg-shaking and drink-spilling. The punk rock/sports bar-hybrid shakes as the band barrels through a set of intense but toe-tappingly and/or groin-grabbingly catchy songs. The vocals contain actual singing, with lyrics being belted out that seem overtly cathartic. You just want to ball these songs up in your hands, throw them into your car, and lock them inside of it. That way you can drive around rainy streets at night, beating on your steering wheel and working out whatever shit you're going through.
Anamanaguchi Wed., May 29, 8 p.m. w/ Chrome Sparks, Dream Fox @ The Demo - $10-$12 By Mabel Suen '80s babies will find the chiptunes of Anamanaguchi all too familiar (and even moreso if they're fans of Scott Pilgrim vs The World: The Game, for which they provided the soundtrack). Using modded Nintendo hardware as their main backing track, the four-piece band supplements joyous 8-bit sounds with standard instrumentation. All the songs are written with a substantial dose of indie rock influence, and the resulting collision of NES and late '90s indie sounds as ridiculous and colorful as a unicorn pissing rainbows. Eat a bunch of candy and go see this show for an extreme sugar high.
The Detroit Cobras Thursday, May 30, 8:30 p.m. w/ Pangea, Tok @ The Firebird - $12-$14 By Roy Kasten From this 2008 show preview: Flea market crate-diggers have many admirable qualities, but torrid, guttural and sexy are not among them. In their heart of hearts, the Detroit Cobras are obscure soul and R&B geeks; in its collective loins the band is a bunch of rock & roll primitives aping nothing. The group plays what it feels when it mainlines the adrenaline of history, an approach that's the polar opposite of "retro." In lead dominatrix Rachel Nagy the Cobras have the cougar-purring apotheosis of a rock singer; in its rhythm section it has the casting call for Night of the Living Stooges. The band reaches for the basest of sources, evidenced by the recent Munster collection Original Recordings 1995-1997, a lo-fi, uncouth set of early singles and rarities that spits the bubble gum onto a junk-strewn garage floor and grinds it under a boot worn from kicking and shaking your ass.
James Murphy Friday, May 31, 7 p.m. @ 2720 Cherokee - $25 By Jaime Lees When the status of LCD Soundsystem moved from "hiatal" to "disbanded," frontman James Murphy decided to go back to his roots in the DJ booth. As a songwriter, composer and co-founder at DFA Records, Murphy is a musical omnivore who has always been involved in every facet of music-making, including recording and producing. But before he was known as Mr. Soundsystem, Murphy earned a reputation as a genre-bending, diverse club DJ. Murphy makes deep beats that the rockers can dig and glitchy, electronic bloops for the ravers. He's a master of hybrid club sounds, measuring out doses of disco, funk and house.
