Shows: The Sapiens, Freer, Oscillating Fan Club and Beggars, 7/12 at Magic Stick: Woman, with The Frustrations and the Pizazz, 7/14 at Corktown Tavern

Two tournig bands are coming through town this weekend, paired with exceptional local line ups.

The Sapiens from Chicago and Woman from Knoxville Tennessee:

Sapiens

The Sapiens are a flavorful, theatric, palpably-punk-leaning quintet also intent on driving pop odysseys, the kind of music that’s almost as much fun to play as it is to listen to…swaying rhythms and booming arena-rock vocals over broken spoke guitar hooks and shakeable rhythms. They’re coming into town from Chicago to play the Magic Bag Theatre in Ferndale with some locals: the 60’s Brit-pop/indie/surf-punk of The Oscillating Fan Club, the lovably crazy and charismatically bacchanalian Beggars and the soul-heavy groove pop of Freer.

The Sapiens are back in the studio recording a follow up to their Vs. The Hornet EP
Freer is also in the studio working things out on their second LP, hoping for a late 08 release
The Oscillating Fan Club is all wrapped up on their debut, and hope for a August or September release.

(Sapiens article from Real Detroit)

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Woman

Moving onto a current favorite, Woman: here's a review of their EP, "Mazes"

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Woman is a Knoxville-based quartet thriving on hollow hellraisers and rhythm-heavy primordial creepy freak outs that waver defiantly between conventional backbeats to intense polyrhythms, standard guitar hooks that mutate down into ear bending prickly pickings then rev up to pedal fuzzed tumblers. Their style blends metal’s screaming guitars with experimental/indie’s aptitude for embracing haunting yowled vocals and adding in post punks bristly hooks. This 4 song EP aptly opens with the spastic-percussive echo-slurred anthem “Not Quite Metal,” boosted by a steady guitar scrape and declarative bass grooves. Almost confrontational in their devotion to push the experimental rock envelope, this EP’s a fine statement of rhythm-heavy spook chants that always speed up into guitar torrents of fuzz-fucked glory.

You can catch Woman, along with the equally distinct punk styling of Detroit’s Fontana, and the art-punk leaning, organ-led quirk-pop of The Pizazz, at the skinny drafty laid back Corktown Tavern, down Michigan Avenue, on July 14th.