Live Reviews
By Rob Browning

Slobberbone
Jeremy Wallace
@ Maxwells
3/26/03
Lots of touring rock bands can do well on a Friday night in New York. If you’ve got a reputation for being a good rock band to drink to, you can almost always guarantee a full room and a somewhat receptive audience. If you can pull that off on A Thursday night in Hoboken, however, you’ve truly got something going on. Denton, TX’s finest, also known as Slobberbone, can do it. If you like your rock from Texas with some Minnesota back, run don’t walk to wherever you see the Slobberbone are playing. Even after a twelve hour work day and bike ride out to Jersey, they still had my ass shaking. They’ve been touring for six or seven months behind the new record Slippage (New West) and still come at you like a pack of wild dogs. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to sit through a Jeremy Wallace set, at least on a school night. The Tom Waits voice thing is getting more than a little played out, and doing a ton of covers isn’t really going to save you. Wallace is a pretty good fingerpicker with a tight little band, but there’s really not too much to get you to leave the bar and check them out live. In this day and age, you’ve got to pick your battles, and Slobberbone is head and shoulders above most of the pack.

Aereogramme
@ Mercury Lounge
3/30/03
There are few things scarier than being at the Mercury Lounge before a Turbonegro show. Sweden’s finest were playing a late show, leaving big shoes for the boys from Scotland to fill as well as what could have been the waiting room at Bellevue. That being said, if you could fill the aforementioned shoes with sound, Aereogramme would have come out on top in spades, as they were only slightly louder than your average jet taking off. Don’t get it twisted, Aereogramme isn’t all sound and no fury. The new record, Sleep and Release, doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but it sure is fun to listen to live. It’s not Merzbow or anything, but the sheer power of the volume and dynamics makes for a pronouncedly more visceral show than you would normally expect on a Sunday night at Mercury. The set leaned more towards stuff from A Requiem In White, but they did work some new material in, including a humdinger of a cover of PJ Harvey’s Snake. Matador’s trying to give these guys a big push and they’ll be touring with the Delgados for a couple weeks at the end of the month, so things seem to be going well for them. Pick up the records. If you’re still riding the fence, check them out live — it’ll make you a believer.