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Wax Idols, Cold Showers, Second Still, + DJ Fernando (KALX)
$8 – $10
Friday, January 26
Wax Idols | Cold Showers | Second Still
The Uptown | 1928 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland
Doors 9PM | Show 9:30PM
$8 Advance | $10 Doors
21+ | Wheelchair Accessible
Cold Showers – coldshowers.bandcamp.com
Cold Showers, a band formed in Highland Park, California in 2010, fuses the brash power of their shoegaze pedigree with the smokey compulsions of post-punk / no-wave ancestors. Cold Showers would fit in well amongst their idols on the Factory or early Rough Trade back catalog, but blend in perfectly amongst the unique foliage of the Dais Records roster. Cold Showers sophomore album out sees the band step up to the plate with more pop sensibility under their belt with the tracks of their new album “Matter of Choice”. This is the pervasive pop mode against which Cold Showers cast themselves, but haven’t fully relinquished themselves from their signature piston-precision rhythms and anthem laden synthesizer illuminations that came about within the band’s formation.
After the band released singles on Mexican Summer and Art Fag, Cold Showers signed with Dais Records. In the late summer of 2012, Dais had released the band band’s debut album, Love and Regret, to a storm of industry praise and critical acclaim. After a few successful tours with bands such as The Soft Moon & Veronica Falls, Cold Showers members decided to take some time off to start crafting new songs in a more pop-oriented direction. These songs started to take demonstrational form in a handful of singles and live cassette releases on Dais until the band decided to hunker down in the studio to formalize the songs found on their new album, Matter of Choice, available August 28th, 2015.
Wax Idols – waxidols.bandcamp.com
Wax Idols are a four-piece based out of Oakland, CA; their sound calls on the mutated aesthetics of varying strains of post-punk (songwriting elements from darkwave and Factory/Rough Trade pioneers, as well as the complex interplay and emotion of post-hardcore), without carbon-copying those who made these maps. Hether Fortune’s powerful voice as the songwriter, arranger, producer, singer and guitarist is at the center, but this makes no other member of the band a replaceable element. Their work together is what makes Wax Idols’ energy these days so vital.
Their forthcoming (and fourth) album Happy Ending is set to be released in Spring 2018, exploring the abstraction & finality of death from both philosophical/political and personal perspectives. This dual theme of political anxiety and personal experience is one Fortune began exploring in seriousness on Wax Idols’ critically-acclaimed third album, American Tragic, which Pitchfork proclaimed “smartly unpacks a pretty universal experience—the sadness, nostalgia, and occasional euphoria involved in letting go of something you once cared about, even when it desperately hurts.” American Tragic was recently reissued on the band’s label Etruscan Gold Records, with a limited-edition alternate cover & remix of the standout single “Deborah” by the band’s own Peter Lightning. -Jes Skolnik
Second Still – secondstill.bandcamp.com
Second Still is a darkwave / post-punk band from Los Angeles. Their debut eponymous album is available as an LP and CD on Manic Depression Records and via cassette on Brussels collective, Sentimental.