Day of the Dead

Salt Lake City Upcoming Concerts: Badly Drawn Boy, Dead Meadow

By Brian Staker, 3-16-07

	Dead Meadow

Badly Drawn Boy
Born Damon Gough, Badly Drawn Boy emerged about a decade ago as one of many new British musicians in the wake of Radiohead, Blur and other English alternative bands’ growing popularity. BDB stood out from the rest due to his painstaking songwriting and innovative arrangements. He guested alongside Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Richard Ashcroft of the Brit glitterati on UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction (1997). His latest effort, last year’s Born In the UK (Astralwerks), strives to be in it’s own way as landmark as it’s Springsteen namesake, though in it’s own soft-spoken way. The more reticent moments speak more deeply and profoundly about life in contemporary Britain, and the world. It’s the kind of concert you have to actually pay close attention to the music, not because it’s played softly, though it sometimes is, but because you want to take in all the intricate details.

March 19, Urban Lounge
Also appearing: Boulder, CO (Fox Theatre)

The Exploited

And now, for something completely different. Perhaps the polar opposite of Badly Drawn Boy’s exquisitely sketched musical moods, the Exploited represents the raw anger of British political punk rock filtered into the subgenre of ‘thrash,’ which does what it says it does, thrashes about, loud and gritty and fast, and they’ve been doing it since the emergence of the Neanderthal in punk rock anthropology, in the early 80’s when punk rockers first began to walk upright and use musical instruments. Don’t any punkers come to my house and slice my throat open with a serrated bread knife now. Still at it now with just as trenchant opinions about the world as ever. There never seems to be a shortage of exploited people in the world. Grease up your mohawk and wear it proudly.

March 20, In the Venue
Also appearing: Aurora, CO (Hubba’s)

Dead Meadow **Staker’s Band Of the Week

Since Hendrix, Clapton and Blue Cheer et al invented psychedelic music in the 1400’s or thereabouts, there will always be an audience for it. The war on mind-alteration, whether by music or other substance, is doomed to be a quixotic enterprise. One of the recent faves in the stoner rock sweepstakes is Washington DC’s Dead Meadow. Similar to Dinosaur Jr, they evolved from punk leanings to Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd influences. Matador is in a way the standard bearer, the apex of success in the indie rock world, so their second Matador release, Feathers, caps their growing fandom with a certificate of good musical housekeeping. The sci-fi lyrical base demonstrates the point on the mythical map where psychedliousness and good old-fashioned nerdity merge.

March 20, Kilby Court
Also appearing:
March 19, Denver CO (Larimer Lounge)
March 22, Boise ID (Neurolux)

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