Friday, September 27, 9 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Psych/disco revivalism of the '70s, in various forms, lands at Rozz-Tox on September 27 as Klaus Johann Grobe, Reptaliens, and Sunshrine take the stage.
Swiss psych-pop/New Wave auteur Grobe dropped Du bist so symmetrisch, his third LP for mainstay Chicago label Trouble in Mind, in late 2018, but if you put it on at a party without any context, I would believe that the album was a forgotten disco classic from decades ago. As a one-man band, Grobe isn’t afraid to show off exactly what makes him suited to make this kind of music. His sensibilities of groove and writing danceable tracks are always on full display, conveyed in his bone-thick, funky-ass bass lines and crisp drum recordings. His synth arrangements hum with fine-grain electronic voices that meld beautifully with his dry guitar lines – check out percolating arpeggios and the Here Come the Warm Jets-style synth melodies on album opener “Discogedanken.” When his voice finally hits, singing in German in a low-key, subtly tuneful mid-range delivery, he evokes the more laid-back exponents of New Wave pop, or the dry proclamations of Kraftwerk.
Later on the album, the excellent “Sights Du Mich Noch?” offers beautiful interplay between bass guitar and synths, as the low-end shifts through a knotty chord progression while staying in the pocket and never sacrificing an iota of the groove. The album has a uniformly professional level of production that highlights each voice and instrument in its own open space, and finds room for layer upon layer of one-off synth performances that serve as lovely ornamentations around the edges of that killer rhythm section. In less capable hands, a project like this would sound like little more than a pleasing throwback. In Grobe’s hands, it feels more like we’re watching an artist who knows exactly what touchstones he wants to channel, but isn’t satisfied with mere pastiche or nostalgia. Some nostalgia merchants focus on the atmosphere of their music, casting everything through the equivalent of a vinyl surface noise filter to get that aged patina. Grobe highlight tones that are as high-fidelity as possible, and pounds out rhythms that are so chunky and elementally danceable that you can’t help but shake along.
Portland-based “dreamwave” unit Reptaliens proves to be a logical complement to Grobe on the bill. The band nails its sound down in the liner notes, describing it as “Gary Wilson-inspired jazzy lounge music, the warmth of Broadcast’s recording production, to Todd Rundgren’s outer space synth sounds.” The vocalist Bambi hits that Trish Keenan sweet spot between mildly bemused disaffection and treacly, sugar-sweet bliss. The band’s windswept arrangements slide over kinetic motorik drumming and flashes of keyboard harmony that vary between mellotron tones and heavenly pads. Album highlight “Shuggie II” (presumably named for psychedelic soul legend Shuggie Otis, or, I don’t know, someone’s cat or something) flits between heavily orchestrated synth bursts and gentle keyboard solos, while the bass and drums pound out a steady backbeat to bounce to. The languid, smeary “Changing” achieves the rare distinction of being “lo-fi” in terms of production – a little muffled and cracked around the edges – while still coming off like a prog-pop classic someone plucked out of a '70s archive.
Moline’s own Sunshrine round out the bill with its brand of Alice in Wonderland-core psych pop. Tracks such as the single “Dream Milk,” released earlier this summer, sound like Strawberry Alarm Clock or Jefferson Airplane as glimpsed through the modern lens of, say, Tame Impala. The reedy, double-tracked vocals reach us with that mild reverb/crackle effect, like we’re hearing them through a megaphone at the end of a tunnel. The organ player maintains a plodding quarter-note rhythm in classic psych-rock fashion as the drummer bumps through more syncopated patterns. It remains to be seen exactly what the deal is with the titular dream milk. Is this a joke about nocturnal emissions? Is this just milk that you drink in your dreams? Maybe their forthcoming album of the same name will provide some answers.
Klaus Johann Grobe, Reptaliens, and Sunshrine play Rozz-Tox at 9 p.m. on September 27, admission is $10-12, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 or visiting RozzTox.com.
