On a Wednesday night I headed from my Harlem apartment to Rough Trade in Brooklyn to check Eureka The Butcher, The Dead Ships and Le Butcherettes.
It was my first time in the venue and I was pleasantly surprised. Cuddled on Williamsburg’s waterfront Rough Trade looks heavily industrial and has no seats whatsoever, what’s why don’t be surprised to see tons of people just sitting on the floor. It’s a music venue/book/record store and the line-up of bands it hosts is deliciously alternative. Having the option to step out of the show and read on a limited edition book of Thurston Moore’s poetry or looking at the fetish comics of Eric Stanton is super refreshing! What I would only change may be is have a taco truck or a hot dog stand or even grilled cheese instead of coffee and may be have a screen in the shop part showing what’s going on on stage. But nobody is perfect, right?
Eureka The Butcher started his set a little after 9 PM and in the beginning I skeptically thought – yep, weird electronica – perfect for 2016 Billyburg, but then I overcame my skepticism of the “hipster” label and actually found the side project of the keyboardist/percussionist of The Mars Volta pretty original and pleasant! The heavily synthesized RnB vocals at the end of his solo set were really good and fitting perfectly my Pacifico draft.
Right after that Eureka The Butcher (or if we go by real names: Marcel Rodríguez-López was joined by what he called his little brother with who he performed 3-4 songs, the last one being the best!
Second on the list were The Dead Ships – garage rock band hailing from LA with a sound that left me a little me a little uncertain in the beginning but eventually grew on me! This garage rock trio hailing from LA is consisted by Devlin – Vocals/Guitar, Christopher – Drums and Alex on Bass and I would say it sounded very distinctively LA.
Devlin definitely broke the ice successfully with a funny story about the 1986 visit of Miles Davis at The White House when he met Nancy Davis and she asked him “What did you do to deserved a visit to the White House?”, “Well I just changed the course of music 3-4 times, what did you do besides to fuck the president? ” Then Nancy Reagan dropped dead and Miles Davis has been wearing her skin for the past 20 years. So it was Miles Davis who died few days ago.”
I enjoyed their set, my only remark being that the vocals sounded a little low, but that was most likely a problem of the sound of the venue.
Mexico always had an interesting alternative scene and La Butcherettes didn’t disappoint – their definitely weird stage appearance and the female vocals reminded me of a more punk version of The Dresden Dolls! Teri Gender Bender looked totally possessed and crazy on stage, yet SO ATTRACTIVE – we’ve seen plenty of polished pretty female vocals, didn’t we?
Must love women that have balls to embrace their weirdness on stage and offer a more interesting amploa! Energy, heavy riffs, outfits, not giving a fuck – Les Butcherettes have it all!
The combination of English lyrics with Spanish elements works really well! I can’t miss to mention the fantastic cover of “Wrecking ball” at the end of their set and how wonderful it looked when Teri got out of stage and hug her fans in the audience!
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