Slingshot Dakota, Pretty Lousy, Wren Kitz, And Mr Doubtfire At The Monkey House September 16 2015

Words by Tim Lewis.

I hope everyone enjoyed the Slingshot Dakota show. At that volume, I’m assuming you all heard it, including Chris Stecher in China. Seriously though, powerhouse tunes from powerhouse people and a fun happy crowd and really, what more could you ask for? Oh, and the other three bands were really good too!.

Mr Doubtfire opened with some fun swinging indie rock that reminded me of Doom Service, and sounded like it would fit nicely on the Mallratts soundtrack. They hit some nice heights and were really fun. The guitar player singer lost his guitar strap at one point and kept playing on anyway. Gotta love rock and roll!

Wren Kitz followed (was that Wren and Mary?) with a very intense set of disembodied voices wrapped around mournfully intense drones until the acoustic guitar evaporates out if it and the singing evaporates out of it and the cello is bowed, and it fills out the sound and the sound becomes more intense and the pedals and knobs begin to shriek and scream, and the wailing becomes moodily immaculate and descends into a peaceful acoustic guitar part and a sweet vocal part and it hangs there for a while and ascends into the heavy wailing shriek, as Wren pulls the chains across the guitar, and it wails until finished and descends into the lovely acoustic end. It was a pretty sweet set.

Pretty Lousy followed and was just Justin Passino singing and playing acoustic guitar. His indie rock sound would have fit perfectly on the soundtrack to Mallrats and all of his songs had a nice sweep to them. After so much electronic intensity I wondered why he was placed in that spot, but that thought evaporated as I was completely engaged with his songs. The set was a bit too short, but was song for song sweet. The breaking a string in the second to last song and just playing the last one with a broken sting was pretty rock and roll too.

Slingshot Dakota followed with a staggeringly beautiful full out rocking sound. Their songs have a great mix of intensity and gorgeousness laced with sweet melodies and powerhouse and super-precise drumming. They played some of songs from Dark Hearts and some from the next album that will be coming next year. The music forced me to move, and lots of people were dancing, and fun was had by everyone in the room, and possibly the few blocks around. Carly Comandospoke passionately about caring for yourselves and your friends and Tom Patterson spoke about the magic of this town, although a lot of the magic comes from great bands like Slingshot who come and join with us by playing for and with us, Their set was beautiful and powerful, note for note. I reveled in every moment until they wrapped it up. I hung out, sad a quick goodbye then took the long walk home. I love the fact that so many wonderful people are out there making the music that comes out of who they are and who they are becoming. I feel so lucky to be a part of it, and love the effort that it takes to notice when it will happen and get out to be with the show. I’m planning on enjoying as much as I can and am thankful to bands like these who make life so much fun.

This post was originally published by Tim Lewis at his personal blog, https://timstriangletribune.wordpress.com.