Live Review: Sweater Girls, Procedure Club & Wild Nothing @ Part Timer Punks- The Echo 09/12/10

The evening started out innocently enough. The Sweater Girls brought a self styled naivety to their diary entry turned song book style of twee pop, reminiscent of Comet Gain or Tiger Trap. With a warm charm and a calculated chastity, Sweater Girls could thaw the chilliest of the jaded. They apparently have a new seven inch out, which should more than satisfy the singles club.

Part Time Punk’s Michael Stockton appropriately paired his DJ set list for the evening with treasured obscurities from indie pop groups such as Trixie’s Big Red Motorbike and The Field Mice. It is so cool to see people dance to good music on the dance floor, which is reason enough to come to Part Time Punks each and every week.

Procedure Club (Slumberland Records) took the stage with more members than the Allman Brothers Band. They were really fucking loud! Andrea’s vocals reverberated through the Echo like a wailing widow trapped in the hull of a sinking ship, forlorn and chamber-esque. The rest of the New Haven six piece seemed to be mostly playing the same note and kind of unrehearsed onstage, which was fine, but a bit superfluous. Extra points for attendance, I guess. Although it was pretty punk how much they were just having fun and not giving a shit about the audience.

Wild Nothing, on the Captured Tracks label, were magnetic and majestic. The four piece’s sound recalls the twilight pop sound of earlier bands like the Wake or the Chills, but Wild Nothing are not ape-like in their debt to this ancestral heritage. Guitars were clean and lanky, the approach was minimal and subtle. Few bands create so much atmosphere with so little. Chief songwriter Jack Tatum's wistfully maudlin sound is given vitality onstage with the pulsing bass, cascading synths and driving percussion of his Wild Nothing band mates. Songs like “Summer Holiday” and “Chinatown” have true anthemic potential, and the crowd was ready for an anthem. It was one of those elbow-to-elbow evenings at the Echo where everyone came to actually hear the band, attentive and grateful. Wild Nothing are something definitely worth checking out.

Eyad Karkoutly