Salt Lake City Upcoming Concerts: Devotchka, the Heaters, Shiny Toy Guns

By Brian Staker, 1-23-07

	Caption: Staker Pick of the Week: Of Montreal

Devotchka

With all the musicians here this week for the Sundance Film Festival in one capacity or another, whether as club entertainment for the glitterati or actual cinematic participants here to hawk soundtracks, Devotchka may be the most literally evocative of aural images of the lot. The fact that they scored one of last year’s biggest indie buzz films, Little Miss Sunshine, doesn’t hurt their ‘indie cred’ either. Although ‘indie cred’ means something different when this ‘indie’ film festival is a place for industry mavens to make million-dollar deals.

The Denver band is like ethnic music for the new millennium, when cultures cross-pollinate with abandon, including instrumentation like fiddle, bouzouki and sousaphone, all with a lot of heart and poetry. Along with Borat’s Kazakhstan, who’da thunk the Balkans would become the hot geographical region of recent note? Their song “Till the End of Time,” from last year’s Curse Your Little Heart (Ace Fu), set the tone for an entire film’s worth of storytelling, and the band sets the tone for inspiring a new direction in indie music.

<>January 23, Suede (Park City)

The Heaters

This week Burt’s Tiki Lounge offers something different from their regular fare of punk slash heavy metal. Hailing from London, the Heaters are the self-proclaimed ‘only thrash soul band.’ They do camped-up covers of “Soul Man”, “Mr. Pitiful” & “Treat Her Right,” and their ‘treatment’ of “Caledonia” they say is the subject of current legal action. Dunno if that means you’ll hear it here or not. I didn’t think local clubs allowed covers at all. Perhaps the band’ll ‘cover’ the royalty payments that create the prohibition.  Formed in 1990, the group of musicians was allegedly as disturbed as they are talented. With outlandish costumes, this may be the scene for the ‘anti Sundance’ crowd, but they must be as visually striking as anything up on the silver screen.

<>January 24, Burt’s Tiki Lounge

Piers Faccini

There is a lot of synaesthesia in the Salty City this week with Sundance in town, but Piers Faccini offers a level you might not think of at first brush, as a painter. But as far as the aural dimension, fans of John Mayer or Loudon Wainwright might find something for their earbuds to glom onto, singer-songwriter Faccini’s vocal chords providing the kind of soulful articulation that sells stories and paints movies. The London-born Anglo-Italian gives evidence with Tearing Sky (Everloving) that he should have a few soundtracks inside him, plenty of wide-angle vistas of metaphorical cloudbursts.

<>January 24, Project Audio Lounge

Also appearing:
January 25: Boise, ID (The Bouquet)
January 28: Boulder, CO (E Town at Boulder Theatre)
January 29: Aspen, CO (Belly Up Aspen)
January 30: Edwards, CO (Rumpus Room)
January 31: Breckenridge, CO (Sherpa & Yeti’s)
February 1: Denver, CO (Walnut Room)

Zilla

Coloradans who read Newwest.net should realize that their region is responsible for all kinds of musical ‘projects’ that might or might not (if music journalists are having a good day or not) be considered an atrocity, like String Cheese Incident. Should hippies really be encouraged? And what do we give you back from Utah, Ryan Shupe and the Rubber Band? Zillais indeed a side project of the above-mentioned, Michael Travis from the SCI’s percussionist. With album titles like Crop Circle Brain Factory and an affirmative answer to questions like ‘is there funk in evidence?’ and ‘is there an emphasis on improvisation?’ when you see this ungodly Zilla approaching be afraid. Be very afraid.

January 24, Urban Lounge

Also appearing:
January 25: Monroe, UT (Mystic Hot Springs)

Shiny Toy Guns

Didn’t we kill off synth pop sometime in the early 90s? Except for electronic dinosaurs like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys whom we allow to tour endlessly, not to mention live. This band is part of the ‘Music On the Streets’ happening at Park City’s world famous film fest, which I assume implies some kind of compulsory fun or enjoyment or something. Oh let me be depressed, it’s January in Utah, going between inversion and a kind of sunlight that seems to freeze things. If you are lucky and get there at just the right time, in addition to drunken celebrity sightings you might get to hear Shiny Toy Guns’ cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” from last year’s Electro Goth Tribute to the Artist Formerly Known As, on which Rebecca Romijn covered “Darling Nikki.”

<>January 25, Sundance Film Festival

Of Montreal

Of all the cinematic musicians in our area this week, Of Montreal, with their wildly imaginative stage sets and costumes to present their outlandish lyrical tales, is the most visually stimulating of them all. A part of the second generation of the Elephant Six collective, which also produced Elf Power and earlier Neutral Milk Hotel and Apples in Stereo, all of which combine innovative sonic approaches to production with poetic, sometimes surreal lyrics to open the mind’s eye indeed. And Of Montreal emerged from Athens, GA, college music powerpoint that yielded REM and B-52’s, who don’t seem that out there now but at the time were noticeably adventurous.

On indie stalwart imprint Polyvinyl, the band’s latest release, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is par for the course of OM’s record title excentrico-meter. And it will only have been out two days as of this show. Their whole oeuvre is like some child-like musical kaleidoscope with touches of Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, even including the cover art. But this one takes frontman Kevin Barnes’ imaginative journeys to a darker, more contemplative dimension, where earlier releases had moments that they could seem a bit slight, like put-ons. He really challenges himself and us here, but it’s still as theatrical. Maybe now it’s like Bergman in Oz. Now here are some performers I’d like to see on the streets of Indiefilm City, USA. And it may not be the silver screen, but they have had music on the O.C.

<>January 25, Sundance Film Festival

Also appearing:
January 23: Albuquerque, NM (Launchpad)
January 24: Tempe, AZ (The Clubhouse)