This week, KISS comes to town along with a handful of other great touring acts -- large and small. A five-band punk bill promises to provide one more hot summer night at Melt, Songbird Cafe constrastingly cools down the Focal Point, Brooklyn's Fielded brings her future pop to the Luminary and much more. Read on for this week's recommendations, and stay tuned until Friday for even more picks for the weekend.
Toupée Monday, August 25 w/ Lil Tits, Eric Hall @ Blank Space 9 p.m. | $5 By Mabel Suen Start the week off right with a noisy Eric Hall sandwich. Hall brings his experimental found sound manipulation to the table for this bill bookended by two hard-edged bands from the windy city. Rotted Tooth Recordings' Toupée plays psychedelic post-punk that sometimes drives and sometimes drones. Lil Tits, on the other hand, sounds as crass as you'd expect judging by its name, banging out snot-nosed screamed songs through a grisly mesh.
Iron Lung Tuesday, August 26 w/ Una Bestia Incontrolable, Renegade Assault Talk, Impalers, Lumpy & the Dumpers @ Melt 9 p.m. | $10 By JImmy Eberle From "The Best St. Louis Punk/Hardcore Shows: August 2014": This is the mega-daddy of DIY end-of-summer shows, especially with four touring bands. Iron Lung is one of the longest-running current-era powerviolence bands in the country. The two-man wall of blast insanity hasn't been to town in a while, and if we want to continue getting shows of this caliber all the punx/kids/nerds/dorks/dweebs should mob up deep and hard to get lost in a waffle tornado at Melt. Lumpy is the only local. He will probably think of something to make the occasion very special and disgusting.
Songbird Cafe Wednesday, August 27 w/ Jack Grelle, Jenny Roques, Ryne Watts, Suzie Cue @ The Focal Point 7:30 p.m. | $12/$15 By Roy Kasten From the 2014 RFT Music Awards: As long as St. Louis has had punk music, it's had musicians like Jack Grelle who have crossed the lines between punk and roots cultures and figured out how to make something new out of where they're coming from. Finding a home on the Big Muddy Records label, Grelle gives an outsider's edge to country music that fits right in with that label's Midwestern punk-blues ethos. He's a clever, natural storyteller, with a voice that recalls gravelly John Prine, and with the Johnson Family Band behind him, he's getting better and better at the essence of hillbilly music -- to make you dance, drink and leave your cares outside the honky-tonk door.
KISS Thursday, August 28 w/ Def Leppard @ Verizon Wireless Amphitheater 7 p.m. | $24-$900 By Jaime Lees From this 2012 show review: The stage show is as big and loud and complicated as you could ever wish for, with pyrotechnics, moving pieces of stage floor, drooling/spitting blood, aerial lifts, a perch for Gene Simmons up in light rig scaffolding and a spinning platform for Paul Stanley out in the audience. (He used some sort of automated zip line to zoom there straight from the stage and it was my favorite part of the night.) Before tonight I already knew that Stanley was my favorite, but he reinforced that bias all night with his obvious love for the fans. He threw out guitar picks at every possible moment, waved at kids and made kissy faces at all of the ladies in the front rows. Dreamy.
