First was Sports Metaphors featuring my friend Dane on guitar and vocals. They are a noisy pop band like Guided by Voices or Miracle Legion and at times Dane's guitar can resemble Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine. I miss their shows a lot and got to this one kind of late. I got to hear some weird stories about tuning instruments and being neurotic. It was really cool; they seemed a lot better since I saw them at Garfield Artworks for a show that I played there in 2011. I will try to see them more often now.
Second up was a band that I had heard of before, but never seen: Crooked Teeth. I liked the sound of their instruments, but really didn't like the vocals. They are similar to Sports Metaphors but too far towards the pop-punk side of noisy pop music for me. They played a bunch of songs with lyrics about high school and forgetting past relationships. The songs sounded good, but I can't stand those kind of vocals at all. Crooked Teeth was very enthusiastic and they definitely put a lot of energy into their performance. I think that they did a good job, but it's not the kind of stuff that I like.
Finally Screaming Females played and I was completely blown away from the start. I had only heard a few of their songs before from other people listening through laptop speakers so this was quite a surprise. Marissa Paternoster has the best guitar sound; the soaring leads of 19 J Mascises along with bits of Guitar Wolf's Seiji and the showmanship of Pete Townshend. So fucking awesome! Her vocals have a resemblance to the previously mentioned Seiji combined with Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna, but smoother than both and still as expressive. The other members of Screaming Females lay down a solid rhythm to her leads with the bassist sounding sort of like Lou Barlow (Screaming Females is basically a much, much, much better version of the later-era Dinosaur Jr). Buy all of their stuff here.
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