Four years into a ten-albums-in-ten-years vow, Missoula band Secret Powers is still making good on its pledge – and making more good music in the process. Just a few weeks ago, the band’s third album, “Lies and Fairy Tales,” was named the best power-pop album of 2010, by the Absolute Power Pop blog.
Tonight, the five-piece outfit (featuring Shmed Maynes on keyboards, John Fleming on bass, Dan Strachan on drums, and Ryan Farley and new member John Brownell on guitar) will release its fourth full-length record, “What Every Rose-Grower Should Know,” which reinforces the band’s reign as one of the country’s tightest and most adventurous power-pop outfits. [Read More...]
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To generations of Americans, the Airstream Safari travel-trailer serves as a sleek symbol of the leisurely life.
To the current generation of Missoula clubgoers, the band known as Airstream Safari pretty much stands for the same.
Comprised of guitarist/singer Isaac McElderry, bassist Miles Cottrell, and drummer Ryan Weingardt, the local band has fashioned a shining example of power-trio rock on its debut, self-titled album, which the group releases tonight at a double-bill CD Release Party with Secret Powers at the Top Hat. [Read More...]
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In the first minute of the first track of the new album by Volumen, everything that is great and goofy about the long-lived Missoula band is on display: The lo-fi sing-song keyboards of Chris Bacon, the stutter-fire pounding of drummer Bob Marshall, Bryan Hickey’s no-nonsense basslines, and the confidently raw dual lead vocals of Shane Hickey and Doug Smith.
These are a few of the favorite things that have drawn flocks of fist-pumping fans to gigs by the band, which celebrates its 10th birthday late this year. Born on a lark – as a one-time New Year’s Eve stunt – the band now stands as one of the most enduring and prolific acts in modern Missoula music.
And now there’s a record that lives up to those hazy late-night memories of brain-searing rock shows. [Read More...]
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It’s growing harder by the day to build a fence around Bob Wire. When local resident Ednor Therriault first started performing music under that name back in the latter part of the last century, it seemed easy enough to peg him as a honky-tonk tunesman. Patsy Cline and Hank Williams, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens: His band’s playlist read like a greatest hits of old-school country dance music.
The first indication that Bob Wire wouldn’t end up following a predictable path may have come in April of 1997, when he and his band, the Fencemenders, announced they were breaking up for good.
“I’m hoping that someone will pick up the torch,” he told the Missoulian at the time.
Turned out, Bob Wire couldn’t keep his own hands way from the fire. [Read More...]
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Most of us know Russ Nasset as the front-man for longtime Missoula musical stalwarts, the Revelators. Playing a mix of country, blues, and rockabilly, the band keeps dance floors bouncing wherever it goes.
But Nasset’s career didn’t begin in the world of dance halls and barrooms. Back in the day, he was a coffeehouse crooner playing old folk music. [Read More...]
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At some point, every band argues over what to call itself. But before the Racquet became the Racquet, those disagreements were at once more intense and easier to manage.
Day by day, band members would walk into bassist Dylan Laslovich’s bedroom and write suggestions on a dry-erase board, or erase ones they didn’t like. The commute wasn’t long, and the daily intrusion wasn’t a big deal. That’s because the three band members, who live together in a house on Fifth Street in Missoula, are used to sharing space. They’re brothers.
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After an 18-second snippet of music that sounds more like a station-ID jingle than the opening to a rock album, a strangely manipulated voice welcomes you to the latest album by Missoula band Secret Powers.
“Hi, how you doing,” the voice intones through the digital haze, “this is Father Shmed, podcasting live to you from the compound of the Electric Family Choir.”
So begins a conceit that runs through the rest of the album: Father Shmed as cult guru, interspersing loftily nonsensical proclamations about fateful electrocutions and extraterrestrial afterlife between songs. [Read More...]
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For those listening in from the outside, the modern heavy metal scene may seem like an angry and dark corner of our modern culture. So the first thing that may surprise you about local metal band Blessiddoom is the band’s stated motive: “Make music that makes you happy.”
Happy never sounded so disconsolate as on the band’s first full-length album, “Dystopium,” out this week on Demonlily Records.
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