Last night at The Church I saw three bands.

Slack­jaw [soon to be Early Girl] was a folky-​moving-​toward-​rock band from Cleve­land that put together a decent sound but I seem to have caught them in the awk­ward part of the tran­si­tion. The vocals are still folky and get over­whelmed by the music.

Amy Kasio was a two-​piece elec­tronic out­fit with poppy lyrics and a fun atti­tude melded with seri­ous intent. The singer played with inflat­able instru­ments, which to me seemed an effec­tive send-​up of tra­di­tional male pos­tur­ing in metal and rock. I espe­cially enjoyed the song “Blow Up the Ice Cream Truck” which you can lis­ten to on their myspace page.

The Shon­des [offi­cial site] head­lined the show. Brooklyn-​based hard rock or power-​punk or who cares, because they put on an awe­some show. I found myself want­ing to throw metal horns a few times because the gui­tar and bass got so raw. The vio­lin was a wel­come addi­tion too.

Inci­den­tally, shon­des is a Yid­dish word that means “out­cast, dis­grace, mon­ster” basi­cally any per­son who doesn’t abide by what soci­ety defines as right. All the bands that played could be con­sid­ered shon­des because they lead [empha­sis on that word] lives out­side of the main­stream as either/​and queers, trans­gen­dered, anti-​occupation Jews, and uni­lat­eral unequiv­o­cal sup­port­ers of human rights.

I always find myself drawn to folks who are empow­ered and engaged in a right­eous cause against Attacks of The Stu­pid™, and when they play music that rocks, well slap me and call me Sally.

Pics from the show start here.