The Tubs -- June 13 at Rozz-Tox.
The Tubs (confuse with the Tubes at your own risk) are a Welsh band, relocated to London and now touring America for the first time. On first listen, their newest album Cotton Crown is a glorious wash of '90s college-rock guitar, a warm shower at midnight in a gently-lit bathroom, radio-ready four-chord nostalgia for hipsters and Blues Traveler fans alike. Taken at the most superficial, background level, it's an energizing shot of musical positivity.
Focus on the lyrics, however, and the darkness immediately rises to the surface. The Tubs' music appears to be getting shinier and chimier in inverse proportion to songwriter Owen Williams' increasingly dark lyrics. The blurb on the Bandcamp page notes that Williams is “delv[ing] further into his favorite themes of love-psychosis, unsympathetic mentally ill behavior, and the humiliations of being a musician in London.” The contrast between the music and lyrics is almost perverse, and the darkness thickens as one reads further, with the closing track and the album cover inspired by Owen's mother's suicide and its fallout.
Fellow Welshman John Cale described his 1973 album Paris 1919 as “an example of one of the nicest ways of saying something ugly.”Cotton Crown is an even nicer way of saying something just as ugly. To quote the Bandcamp page again: “The essential trick Cotton Crown plays is to offset Williams’ lyrical bleakness with joyous, hook-laden blasts of pop perfection.” It fooled me, and I feel like a churl looking back on the little boost I got when I first played the album. But the Tubs don't seem to be out to bum out their audiences. When they play Rozz-Tox in Rock Island, people will dance. People will have a good time to this music. And that seems like it's the point, or at least one of them – no band this musically upbeat could possibly intend for its listeners to wallow in sorrow. There are many ways to process trauma and grief, and the Tubs' “raucous, beery live show” sounds like one of the more fun, even healthy ways to do so.
Appearing with the Tubs are Subatlantic and Camp Regret. Subatlantic's newest (Say It Again, 2023) is a dignified cry for affirmation, validation, closure, release. The “ugly” it confronts is, in part, the callous disregard of one or multiple targets, a perpetual state of leaving, disconnect, unfulfillment. All this is processed with modest restraint, through instrumental arrangements spare or lush depending on the song, with music that is touching and indeed, as the band themselves state, “danceable.”
Despite their name, Camp Regret are a fun live band. Unless you're concentrating hard on every single syllable of Jon Burns' lyrics, you'd have to make an effort to be down after one of their sets. They're the ideal local opener in this setting – like everyone else on the bill, they're clearly working through some stuff, but they're working through it with fun, high-energy, keyboard-enhanced punk that's got hooks but also enough jagged post-punk guitar to keep things interesting, and to keep them outta the power-chord swamp. Their still-brewing debut release may be my most anticipated QC album of the year.
The redoubtable Ragged Records is helping present this all-ages show. Tickets for the Tubs' June 13 event are $15 in advance through RozzTox.com, and $20 at the door (cash-only). Doors open at 7 p.m., and music starts at 8 p.m. A note on ticketing at Rozz-Tox: advance tickets are only accessible through the Dice app = however, if you're unable to retrieve your digital tickets (for example, if you, like me, carry a flip-phone), the extremely chill and reasonable Rozz-Tox door-people can confirm your purchase by merely checking your name against the online list.
Saturday, June 14 brings perhaps the most interesting mixed bill to hit the Quad Cities this year. Planning for Burial headline a four-band bill at the Raccoon Motel in Davenport, fresh off the release of It's Closeness, It's Easy, a moving blend of metal, shoegaze and ambient music. As the Bandcamp page puts it:
“It captures the slow drift of time, the unnoticed shifts in a loved one – the creeping changes in mental health, the quiet pull of addiction, the kind of grief that settles in the bones rather than announces itself … . It confronts the reality of living with the hand that’s been dealt and searching for meaning in what remains. It speaks to loss – the crushing weight of saying goodbye to a beloved 17-year-old cat, the slow-motion grief of watching friends self-destruct, the inescapable passage of time as it bears down on aging parents and the self. But it also reflects the warmth of reconnection, the kind of love that never burns out but instead deepens. The feeling of picking up where things left off, untouched by the years in between.”
Thom Wasluck is the sole creative force behind Planning for Burial, and in the words of the organizers of the June 14 show, his solo live performances “assume a visceral poignancy live, at volume, that one could describe as emotionally effervescent.” When Robert Smith of the Cure directed the Meltdown Festival in London in 2018, Wasluck was invited to perform, rightly described as a “defining moment” in his two decades of performing, recording and DIY touring.
Stander are an ambitious, progressive trio from Chicago. As promoters put it, “Stander’s explosive, angular, post metal experimentation turns corners you don’t know exist, as if guided by grinning Tralfamadorian anarchists.” Their newest (Collapsing) sees them augmenting a previously instrumental sound with multiple vocalists, enriching a deeply emotional yet cerebral sound.
Local support comes from the ever-shifting experimental black metal of Everlasting Light, as well as a rare opening appearance from Archeress. Perhaps the most ambitious band in the Quad Cities, the prolific, difficult-to-categorize band were laid low first by the plague years, then by an electrical surge that wiped out their painstakingly-crafted album in process as well as their entire recorded works. Popping up on social media with zero warning a few weeks back, the band announced in typically cryptic fashion the imminent release of the “highly-monolithic” forthcoming full length The Masterless Universe, Part I: Runner, Through The Belt Of Dreams, at a date as yet undetermined but possibly aligned with the Strawberry Moon, a.k.a. the full moon that peaks three days before the Raccoon show. Hints have been dropped, heavily steeped in the band's peculiar spiritual and eschatological vision, and three different versions of a nearly 18-minute single have been posted on the Archeress Bandcamp page. To say this is a major musical event is an understatement. Doors for the Raccoon Motel's June 14 Planning for Burial concert with Stander, Everlasting Light, and Archeress are at 6 p.m., with the music at 7 p.m., and admission is $20.
Following the solemnities of the previous two nights is an absolute rock and roll spectacle. The Darts are four ladies with style and chops, playing a revved-up, punked-out take on '60s garage rock, complete with old-school Farfisa providing just-this-side-of-the-right-kind-of-cheesy organ and a '60s-goth aesthetic that reflects perfectly the self-described “dark-yet-fun” bent of their music.
Fresh off a European run, they're hitting the Raccoon Motel on Sunday, June 15, at the start of the summerlong Nightmare Queens tour- two weeks in the U.S., another month in Europe, and one more month back here. It's part of a relentless touring, writing, and recording regimen that's seen the release of back-to-back studio albums in 2023 and 2024, plus a brand-new repackaging of 11 choice cuts with two new songs from which the tour takes its name.
The goal from the start was to have fun and see the world, but topicality has gradually crept into the songwriting. “In the past, I wrote Darts songs to be kind of fun – a little spooky, a little deadly, but always with a wink.” said frontwoman, organist and songwriter Nicole Laurenne in a 2023 interview with It's Psychedelic Baby Magazine. “ … some of these songs have more serious messages hidden in them even though they are really fun songs.” While songs of perseverance, lie-spewing mass media and LGBTQ+ support can be found among the spooky good times, Laurenne affirmed to Louder Than War that “ … no Darts record takes itself too seriously either; we have a lot of excitement about the future and we have a great time together. That always spills out into the songwriting no matter what else is going on.”
The greatest cat I ever lived with was a sassy, highly-intelligent eight pound calico named The Whining Cat who would trot around like “a little rich girl” (in the words of a friend) and had a less-than-tolerant attitude towards the servants. She'd poke you in the face when she wanted you to get up in the morning, and if you didn't respond quickly enough, the pokes turned to slaps. The Darts' music has a similar effect- bracing and forceful, full of sass and stylish power. They would've gotten along great with the Whining Cat. Doors for the Darts' Raccoon Motel concert on June 15 are at 6 p.m., the show is at 7 p.m., and admission to one of the finest rock shows around is $20.
