Bare Mutants

Bare Mutants know how you feel...

Their stew of twanged out swirly-post-rock seriously stews over so much of the day to day shit, the frustrations sometimes made frivolous in hindsight, and steamrolls it under crusty distortion and obfuscating echoey effects, quashing out catharsis with fulsome guitars and brooding baritone. But halfway through The Affliction, (out on In The Red records) when a poppier kind of waltz splits up the sides and lets in some sunshine, you start to suspect some pointed parody of other moodier murk-rockers (like, I dunno, The National?) with titles like "I Suck At Life," and the marching balladry of "Crying With Bob," surging with a kind of pageantry characteristic to some unfilmed high-school-cast coming-of-age indie art pic soundtrack's closing credit scene. ("Life took a dump on me today..." Can't sing it any plainer than that!)

In any case, mid-00's music fans around this area will hopefully recall the multiple stops that Chicago-area indie-rockers Ponys made here throughout their existence, fronted by singer/songwriter Jered Gummere... Well, this is Gummere's new thing.



National -i.e. non-Michigan Bands-  are starting to stop into our neighborhoods on a more regular basis this last year. And, I'm not talking about the arenas, I'm talking about the modest sized bars like The Loving Touch. Not that this is a life-or-death end-of-the-world type of issue, but in order for a music community to thrive, one considerable aspect of that is supporting the bands who aren't your actual friends or neighbors, the perfect strangers -rather- who are really just like your friends and neighbors...only they live about 6 or 9 hours down the freeway...

Detroit's Feelings and Radio Burns open things up - at the Loving Touch in Ferndale Tuesday (12/3) at 8pm