It has been a long week, and I'm too wiped out to say much of anything about Los Straightjacket with Big Sandy, Wednesday at Cat's Cradle. The concept was that they would join forces to play '70s Mexican hit songs, which were themselves covers of '60s U.S. hits. That was great in theory, but I actually enjoyed Los Straightjackets more when they were sans Sandy and doing their own thing. New Orleans' The Iguanas opened.
If you read my Tiny Mix Tapes top 25 of 2006, or got any of my myspace bulletins last week about Pontiak, you know I dig this band. And if you missed their show Thursday at Reservoir, well, you're just lucky I got video of one of their best songs. Pontiak is swampy blues-rock from Baltimore made by three brothers (at least I think they're brothers -- they all have the last name Carney).
The Reservoir show was the first show of a summer tour in support of a new CD, which isn't out yet, but which singer/guitarist Van was kind enough to give me. It's called
"Sun on Sun," and it's darker, more brooding and even better than last year's "Valley of Cats." Here's a video I got of the CD's first song, "Shell Skull." Reservoir's lighting isn't really great for video, but it sounds alright.
NOW LISTENING TO: Cantwell, Gomez & Jordan, "We Are Not at the Opera."
Thanks to Kim from 307 Knox Records for passing this along. CG&J's quirky prog-metal has the tendency to be really exciting one minute, and just too tiresomely quirky the next. I like them best when they just let go and rock. Luckily they do enough of that on this CD to get me through the slower parts. The CD includes a pretty cool video for "Shayna wuz here ... peeing like a cheetah."
