It List: Wednesday

El Paso Hot Button/The Black/Ume (The Lounge): This is almost the tenth time in three years (Wow, three years, really?) that we have listed El Paso Hot Button on a show, so I'll spare you any redundancy, but at least mention that some of the tracks have a quieter 60's psych-sound I wasn't expecting, which is a welcome departure from the usual riff-focused material heard from this project. Ume is one of those bands that never quite does it for me, they are one of many bands that gets lost in this "sea of ordinary" where many bands find themselves; competent at their instruments and they seem tasteful enough, but somehow everything just comes out as the audio equivalent of Diet Sprite. These words are hard for me to type since they seem a little pointlessly harsh, but I'm what I'm supposed to say after hearing 40,000 bands like this? In any event, I wish them great success, because the odds are stacked against you when you're in a straight-forward rock band, and I mean that with all sincerity.

Mad Swirl/Swirve (Absinthe): I first caught Swirve almost a decade ago, and they put on an impressive show in a rather unlikely place: The Bone in Deep Ellum. I saw them again this past month at The Lounge, and they were still good, mixing horns and drums in either an improvisation that sounded meticulously planned, or a meticulous plan that sounded improvised. In either case, the music is pretty good and even kept the meat-heads interested. Why are instrumental acts automatically considered "experimental?" I can name ten off the top of my head (Explosions In The Sky being the daddy of them all) that basically play children's music.

ADD: Yells At Eels/Billingham's Defense System (The Cavern): One of Detour's best lineups yet.

ADD: Sun Club/Females/Yeah Def (Hailey's): Sun Club will be spinning Chicago and French house, Detroit techno, microhouse and disco. Sorry, internet is acting a little strange today, so we can't add links at the moment.