Liv Carrow Electric Band at Rozz-Tox -- May 30 (photo by Loren Thacher).
The three live-music events scheduled at Rozz-Tox (2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island, IL) in May pair talented local artists with respectable regional bands, and, on May 18th, a topnotch, brand-new, international heat-seeker.
Takaat are three-fourths of Mdou Moctar, who have risen to international prominence with an electrified, rock-influenced take on traditional West African string music, commonly known as “desert blues.” While their name means “noise” in English, the music on their debut EP is a logical extension of the increasingly heavy sounds of Mdou's blazing 2024 album Funeral for Justice, without the distinctive, fiery guitar and keening vocals of frontman Mahamadou “Mdou Moctar” Souleymane.
Despite a stated penchant for racket and “sonic chaos,” Takaat's recordings sound exultant, celebratory, the reveling of musicians free to fly. “We all have this trust with each other, which took a long time to build,” says bassist Mikey Coltun, speaking with Justin R. Cruz Gallego last year in an interview for Talkhouse. “It feels like Ahmoudou [Madassane, guitar and vocals], Souleyman [Ibrahim, percussion], and I are a unit. We move as one, and Mdou could really just do whatever and we’re there to follow him.”
As Takaat, they're now a unit in earnest, moving as one without their formidable leader. While the rest of the band come from the troubled Saharan country of Niger, Coltun hails from Washington, D.C.; in addition to years spent playing different strains of African music in different countries, a shared DIY background helped him to gel with his Tuareg bandmates.
Speaking with Jeffery Silverstein of The Creative Independent in 2022, Coltun elaborated: “I realized the Agadez scene is no different than the DC punk scene. People bringing in their own PA, generators, and setting up either outside of a house or in the middle of a desert or on the street. Playing for a bunch of people and kids going crazy.”
“Going crazy” is a key part of it – for the musicians and the audience. I caught Mdou Moctar on their “acoustic” tour earlier this year, touring for Tears of Injustice, the solemn acoustic version of Funeral. It felt almost wrong to be moving and grooving to songs about the misery of colonial oppression, but the smile on Mdou's face when he looked out at the crowd said it all. While desert blues comes from a tradition of protest, the music itself is motion, with its roots lying with a nomadic people and its sounds soliciting a physical response from the listener.
Coltun's description of Mdou in the Independent interview applies just as accurately to Takaat: “We don’t want to play world music events, we don’t want to play hippie festivals. This is a rock band.
“It’s a big difference when we’re playing a seated show to older white people versus a show where people are moshing and crowd surfing. The first time people were going off I almost shed a tear because it was like, people get it, this is a rock band. It was beautiful. I looked over to Mdou and he was smiling at me. It was moment where we broke free of this … world music term that’s so racist and not doing anyone justice[.]”
Given the size of Rozz-Tox, moshing and crowd surfing are not recommended, but if any show in the Quad Cities this year is a show for dancing, writhing, and celebrating “the ecstasy of togetherness,” it's this one. Nothing else complements (and compliments) raucous, cathartic electric music like a roomful of people moving joyously in response.
Takaat's openers share with the visitors a preference for minimalism and precious little else. Nonnie Parry have lately paired their instantly recognizable guitar sound with the ominous, inflexible beat of “4 decrepit analog select-a-rhythm drum machines that have a penchant to fail and stop working mid-set” when needed most. Other arcane and temperamental gadgets free up space for a synthesizer gloaming that murks over everything. Their morbid, primitive cyber-goth sensibility is an unexpected counterpoint to the vibrant explosion of Takaat, first-world underworld gloom and third-world ascension brought together into a unique yin and yang.
The 24th of May sees the return of FACS to the Quad Cities. They share the propulsive post-punk rhythms of the best Chicago bands (Shellac, the Jesus Lizard, etc.) but eschew noise-guitar clang and crunch for a warped, watery treatment that does little to dispel an overall high-tension sound. Uptight, laden with dread, and yet, they're groovin' – along with a number of others, I found it difficult to stop moving during their set at Ragged Records in Davenport, a standout moment of last year's Alternating Currents.
Even their quiet moments aren't “calm,” and their sparse, economical lyrics do more with fewer words than it takes to describe them. Their new album Wish Defense was the final one recorded by the late Steve Albini, and its clarity and drive is as fitting a final work as any record he could touch.
The last time I wrote about God's Hand, about a year-and-a-half ago, I mistakenly referred to them as God's Hands. A correction and apology are in order, and here offered, on the occasion of their opening for FACS. They were pretty deranged when I caught them at Bootleg Hill Honey Meads late in 2023 – what stood out from their punk-rock clamor was the demonic presence of an excessively well-dressed Englishman who hollered and lurched about in a manner unbecoming his seemingly cultured background. It is possible he's been in Iowa City since before the settlers arrived, the deathless incarnation of that old evil spirit that drives man to improve upon the unimprovable, happy amongst the interstate sprawl that oozes from Cedar Rapids to Coralville and flows both east and west on the nightmare corridor of I-80. Manifest Destiny. Judge Holden. Offstage, he smiled, smiled, smiled from his glasses like Sin City's mute cannibal Kevin; likely he is smiling still. Which hand, which god?
May's final Rozz-Tox visitor, on Friday the 30th, also comes from Chicago. Doom Flower use “rock” instruments (guitars, drums and synth) to create a sound more akin to trip-hop than conventional rock stylings. Low on dynamics, high on continuity, their music can be appreciated through close concentration or enjoyed as a calm, flowing whole. Songwriter Jess Price's experience working in land management in Nebraska, as related to Britt Julious of the Chicago Tribune in 2022, found its way into Doom Flower's music: the “pent-up energy” generated by the novelty of the new environment was an explicit creative influence, and on a subjective level, one can see parallels between the meticulous work of setting controlled burns in the Nebraskan landscape and the smooth, methodical way in which their songs cohere.
Opening for Doom Flower is the debut performance of the Liv Carrow Electric Band. Carrow, an East Coast transplant and folkie of some repute, is already an accomplished singer/songwriter and a fine fingerpicker to boot. She's joined forces with three of the best musicians in the Quad Cities – no hyperbole – to bring new life to her original songs and open new creative doors.
Pat Stolley, Chad Gooch, and Dennis Hockaday form three-fifths of Running Man, one of the most exciting bands, rock or otherwise, to emerge from the QC in recent years. Each have years of experience in their own varied projects, and as a unit, says Carrow, “this band can do anything. We are having fun working out all the sounds and moods and styles we have access to. It still feels very new but we’ve locked into a good groove and I think we all know what that is by now. I have been in a lot of bands but I haven’t ever had this experience of players just getting on the wavelength this coherently with my original music.
“We’ve kind of dialed into British folk rock, shoegaze, 70s -90s psych rock and indie … as a band I just feel like we are listening to and influenced by everything. My songwriting is more or less folky and timeless so we can put it through lots of filters and see what works.”
Tickets for Takaat are $10 in advance and $15 at the door. Tickets for FACS are $20 in advance and $25 at the door. Tickets for Doom Flower are $10 at the door only. All at-the-door sales are cash-only, and advance tickets for the first two shows can be found at RozzTox.com. Doors for all three shows are at 7 p.m., with the music beginning at 8 p.m.
