Tre Orsi | T.T. The Bear's Place | 25 August

Texas-based indie rock luminaries' brief tour includes dates with the legendary Karl Hendricks Trio, Philadelphia shoegaze giants Arc In Round, and the veritable supergroup Martha's Vineyard Ferries (which features Chris Brokaw, Bob Weston and a fellow named Elisha Weisner). Tre Orsi's debut long-player Devices + Emblems was released by Princeton, New Jersey's Comedy Minus One earlier this summer.

Martha's Vineyard Ferries, heretofore unheard of by us, joins Tre Orsi on the first three dates. The Ferries apparently will issue in a week or two a debut EP titled In The Pond. Sickroom Records -- whose web site, of course, makes no mention of it -- will release the four-song 12" record, according to Chris Brokaw's web dojo.

Perhaps you recall this taster MP3?

Tre Orsi's "The Engineer"

Today's Hotness: Pastel Group, The Answering Machine, E.R.

>> We don't know much about Boston's Pastel Group beyond its music (well, and that Nick Pastel restores furniture, which is actually tres awesome), but it is a very strong calling card indeed. The brilliant, new-ish act -- which incorporates a certain New Romantic patience with a gently fractured pop sensibility -- was apparently commissioned in 2009 as a trio. However, a personnel listing at Pastel Group's MySpace wigwam now contains five names; Facebook, of course, lists three people, so who knows; we sent an exploratory email to the band via its MySpace and eagerly await a response. The apparent quintet released earlier this summer the free Jamaica Plain EP, so named because that is the section of Boston from which Pastel Group hails. A second, related EP is slated for release sometime this coming fall. Jamaica Plain is available for free download at this link; in an innovation we've never encountered before, Pastel Group has somehow made it so the EP downloads from Google Docs. The EP's four songs are "Midwestern Sun," "Mistreated," "On This Night" and "Opinions And Thoughts," and they are all winners. To whet your appetite, here's an embed of that last track, a relatively guitar-oriented bleeper that shines brightly.

Pastel Group's "Opinions And Thoughts"

>> According to this post to the band's MySpace blog, the first single from The Answering Machine's forthcoming sophomore set Lifeline will be for the song "Animals." The Manchester, England-based quartet will promote "Animals" with a short slate of late October tour dates in its home town, London and Glasgow; the dates are posted at The Answering Machine's recently refreshed web site right here. We reported here last month that The Answering Machine plan to release the self-produced Lifeline worldwide in January.

>> Elsewhere in Boston: word is that Eldridge Rodriguez' long awaited You Are Released is, errrr.... a little closer to being released. The full-length, the second from the co-fronter of Boston's incendiary indie titans The Beatings, is currently being mastered and E.R. foresees a spring 2011 launch around the time of the annual SXSW confabulation. E.R.'s recent EP There's No Gray Area, No Middle Ground... You Are a Thief is now available through most if not all of your favorite digital music storefronts. Speaking of awesome, have you checked out the free 2009 Midriff Records sampler? It features tunes from most if not all of the cohort, including such fire-breathing classics as The Beatings' "All The Things You've Been Missing" and Eldridge Rodriguez' "Why I Fear The Ocean." But we'll just cut to the chase and say the reason you should download this RIGHT NOW is for The Beatings' cover of Beat Happening's "Indian Summer." Download the .zip file here. And we'll post "Indian Summer" below. The Beatings play House Of Blues, Boston's Front Room for free this Saturday, Aug. 14; E.R. plays Friday Aug. 20 at P.A.'s Lounge in Somerville. Get with that.

The Beatings -- "Indian Summer" -- 2009 Midriff Records Sampler
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[buy music from Midriff here, it will make them happy]

Review: Cave | Pure Moods

[We are pleased to welcome to these electronic pages disc jockey extraordinaire and man-about-town Jeff Breeze. Mr. Breeze truly needs no introduction, so we'll just plug his fine local music program on WMBR and ice cream blog and get out of the way. -- Ed.]

The roads that stretch across the Midwest do so on a more continental scale than those that wind through the hills of New England. Out west it is often just acres and acres of crops, with civilization clustered near highway pull-offs. It's on those roads that the sounds of Cave were refined. The Chicago-based quartet was actually formed in mid-Missouri, and has travelled the roads between the two well enough to know which counties are ruled by Jackie Gleason-like sheriffs and in which you can put a brick on the accelerator and crank up the Kraftwerk.

Previous Cave records on Permanent and Important caused Drag City to take notice, which incited the venerable Chicago label to release Pure Moods (on 12" or download, but not CD). The three-song EP, issued May 18, is the best document of the band so far, wherein some of its most truly motorik impulses take control, and the set finds Cave coming into its own as a band.

Opener "Hot Bricks" is the reason that you still listen to AM radio -- so you can check the traffic report before starting the music (of course, dropping the needle at home should suffice for getting you into this headspace as well). In reality you'll want to wait until you are out of the slow lane before pressing play on the iPod, because once the momentum is flowing, you'll be transported to some sort of Midwestern Autobahn that has billboards with way too many consonants and diners devoted to David Hasselhoff instead of Elvis. While the lyrics to "Hot Bricks" are lost in the mix (and maybe a desire for obfuscation), the different ways of singing the title to the second track on the A side, "Teenager," along with a righteous guitar riff, will have listeners thinking Damo Suzuki found a good band again. It's an anthem for the inarticulate kids finished with high school and not ready to leave for college yet, fearing once they're college kids, they never really can be teenagers again. With an impenetrably tight rhythm section and noodly keyboard washes, Cave tips their collective cap to Can as well as Captain Beefheart while inspiring dancing in our youths.

The B-side of the album, "Brigitte's Trip (White Light/White Jazz)" is a 13-minute tour de force of passion and control as the players ignite the spirit of all of the influences that you want to imagine. Analog synth sounds wash across guitar freakouts and a voice lets out a cry. However, it's not a cry of pain, but one of exuberance. Cave isn't desecrating the sounds of the past, they are reprising them and praising them and filling that spirit with the bacchanalia of today. Cave launches almost two months of North American tour dates tonight in Columbus, OH; the quartet will circumnavigate Europe and the U.K. from early October through its Dec. 6 ATP festival appearance. The U.S. dates are posted below; local readers should note the band plays at The Temple in Jamaica Plain tomorrow night. -- Jeff Breeze

Cave: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

08.10 -- Now That's Class -- Cleveland, OH
08.11 -- The Temple -- Boston, MA
08.12 -- Cafe Nine -- New Haven, CT
08.14 -- Cake Shop -- New York, NY
08.15 -- Issue Project Room -- Brooklyn, NY
08.16 -- The Bank -- Baltimore, MD
08.17 -- Johnny Brenda's -- Philadelphia, PA
08.18 -- Gooski's -- Pittsburgh, PA
08.19 -- Cafe Bourbon St. -- Columbus, OH
08.20 -- Russian Recording Studio -- Bloomington, IN
08.21 -- Alvin's -- Detroit, MI
10.01 -- Mojo's -- Columbia, MO
10.02 -- Cropped Out Festival -- Louisville, KY

Today's Hotness: Little Gold, Philistines Jr.

>> One of the more recent Sound Opinions podcasts discussed bands or artists that had "gone off the rails," which is to say the band or artists changed styles or suddenly produced such terrible work that critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis felt betrayed them. We have a similar disappointment with erstwhile, Brooklyn-based indie punk gargantuans Meneguar. As far as we can tell, the quartet never formally broke up, it just dissolved into other acts. The most notable of these is the new-wave-of-American-psych outfit Woods, whose music simply doesn't connect with us. Meneguar's final record The In Hour was a sprawling lo-fi effort that hinted change was coming, but we can't help hoping that eventually Meneguar will reconstitute itself and deliver a lacerating set of angular, guitar-heavy indie rock akin to the contents of Strangers In Our House -- our favorite record of 2007 -- and I Was Born At Night (the band's stunning debut, so nice it was released twice).

Last month brought word that Meneguar guitarist Christian DeRoeck's more recent project Little Gold was releasing a new single and planning to record later this year a sophomore album (Little Gold's debut On The Knife, released in 2009, slipped completely under our radar). And the very good news is that Mr. DeRoeck's music is short sharp bursts of melodic, guitar-centric indie rock. It's not Meneguar, but it has a shambling charm and an edge that is incredibly appealing. Little Gold's "Completely Fucked!" is available now in a limited run of 300 singles pressed onto orange vinyl (!) by Heartbreak Beat. You can download the A-side below; the B side is available for streaming at the Little Gold MySpace cabin right here. We are happy to know that if we can no longer see DeRoeck doing this, at least we have his wonderful Little Gold project to help fill the Meneguar-shaped hole in our heart. Little Gold embarks on a U.S. tour this week, and we've posted the band's full itinerary below (which includes a Louisville date with the wonderful State Champion).

Little Gold -- "Completely Fucked!" -- "Completely Fucked!" b/w "Chainsaw"
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[buy the Little Gold 7" right here]

08.11 -- Cakeshop -- New York, NY
08.13 -- Garfield Artworks -- Pittsburgh, PA
08.14 -- The Hideout -- Chicago, IL
08.16 -- The Medusa -- Minneapolis, MN
08.17 -- Vaudeville Mews -- Des Moines, IA
08.18 -- Replay Lounge -- Lawrence, KS
08.19 -- The Dairy -- Memphis, TN
08.20 -- Discoteca -- Chattanooga, TN
08.21 -- Skull Alley w/ State Champion -- Louisville, KY
08.22 -- Al's Bar -- Lexington, KY
08.23 -- Kingbee Ground Sound -- Kingbee, KY
08.26 -- Allways Lounge -- New Orleans, LA
08.27 -- Argentum -- Houston, TX
08.28 -- 2908 Cole St -- Austin, TX
08.31 -- YOBS -- Tempe, AZ
09.01 -- Tin Can Alehouse -- San Diego, CA
09.02 -- The Smell -- Los Angeles, CA
09.04 -- Hemlock Tavern -- San Francisco, CA
09.05 -- Mudai Lounge -- Portland, OR
09.07 -- Sunset Tavern -- Seattle, WA
09.08 -- S.S. Josephine -- Seattle, WA
09.11 -- Yellow Feather -- Denver, CO
09.11 -- Rockaway Tavern -- Denver, CO
09.16 -- The Happy Dog -- Cleveland, OH

>> Back when we were music director of the radio station of our small liberal arts college in the mid-'90s, we got our share of free stuff, often just duplicate copies of CDs or records (hello The Bends on vinyl). Most of these extras were jettisoned forthwith because -- even 15 years ago -- there was a lot of crap being serviced to radio, yes, even in the pre-Pro Tools era. Like today we'd take a flyer on certain things, and one that worked out marvelously was The First Bubble Core Records Sampler [Amazon], which featured a bunch of acts that we think were sort of centered around the scene at Yale? Maybe? Anyway, the comp had some amazing cuts, including the explosive and transcendent "Adam's Living Room" by an act called Me + Dave and a few standout cuts by a quirky combo going by the name Philistines Jr. Years later we would learn that the latter act featured now-prominent-recording-guy Peter Katis, whose name you probably recall is attached to records by Interpol, Mobius Band and The National. Anyway, imagine our surprise last week when we learned that Philistines Jr. never actually broke up, and that the act has finally gotten a new record in the can. If A Band Plays In The Woods...? will be released Oct. 5 on the band's own Tarquin Records. The set apparently took 10 years to record (Mr. Katis is quite busy), and you can stream the entire thing on SoundCloud right now, and it is well worth hearing, as strong as any of the early material. Have a listen. If you try just one track, make it "If I Did Nothing But Train For Two Years." No buy link for the set yet, but we expect it will eventually be listed here.

Deep Heaven Now Festival | Somerville, Mass. | 7 Aug.

Featuring The Hush Now, Young Adults, and scads of other hot rock acts. We're not afraid to tell you we think we first saw Asteroid No. 4 in Philly in 1997. They've been around. Complete details about Deep Heaven Now are posted at this Facebook page. Organizer Jinsen Liu was on WMBR's Pipeline! show last night with host Jeff Breeze promoting the event as well, and you can catch the archived stream right here.

That Was The Show That Was: The Hush Now | Great Scott | 2 August

About five minutes after guitarist and singer Noel Kelly casually mentioned that The Hush Now wasn't really shoegaze, he was on stage with the band he founded laying out intense, wavering guitar atmospherics alongside lead guitarist Adam Quane. We certainly don't dispute that The Hush Now isn't a precise fit for the shoegaze tag, but as the band's music grows increasingly powerful and nuanced, it ain't just indie pop anymore, either. Indeed, the real story last night was the precision and control the band displayed conjuring illuminating intros and outros for the songs that conveyed impressive musicianship amongst the five players. It was a great show.

The band opened with a moving iteration of "Thorns" and then sprung headlong into a dangerously fast version of "Traditions," both older tracks from the band's repertoire. However, The Hush Now also used last night as an opportunity to showcase material from its sparkling forthcoming EP Shiver Me Starships, which the band will self-release next month. Of particular note was the live airing of the new tune "For What It's Worth," an almost bluesy ballad that was much more visceral when played live than its recorded version. The Hush Now also played "Big Awesome," which may be the EP's strongest track, and then closed with the bouncy and delightful EP opener "The Other Ones."

The Hush Now will perform Saturday in Somerville, Mass. at P.A.'s Lounge as part of the Deep Heaven Now festival. You can view more details about the festival, including the running order and transportation options, right here. Haven't heard any of the new EP yet? Here's "The Other Ones."

The Hush Now's "The Other Ones"

The Hush Now: Internerds | MySpace | YouTube | Flickr

Footage: Calories' "FFWD"

Brilliant lead single from Birmingham, England-based post-punk titans Calories' forthcoming record. "FFWD" will be released digitally Aug. 30. Calories' hotly anticipated sophomore set Basic Nature will be released by Tough Love Records Sept. 13, all of which we reported here previously. Basic Nature is a combined vinyl/CD/digital download package that is apparently limited to 500 pieces, so you'd best pre-order that jawn now. The trio's new track "You Could Be Honest" is getting pushed by the irritatingly vowel-challenged RCRDLBL site, and you can download the tune right here.