Preview: Peekaboos, Dweeb, Nightstalker / October 9 / Smiling Skull
By Marc Blanc, Contributor
The Smiling Skull Saloon / Thursday, October 9, 2014
It was the city of wind, it was the city of bricks. One had deco skyscrapers before her, the other had green hills. In both cities it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the scene’s preserves of garage rock, that Chicago and Athens were more similar than most believed.
Christopher Lute is the young guitarist and vocalist for Athens trio Nightstalker, and co-founder of a DIY record label operating mainly out of the City by the Lake. Dark Circles Records grew since 2011 to release bands from all over Ohio--not just the music of Lute and friends--and has since been destined to manifest westward, taking several main contributors to Chicago. Lute, a music production major, remained in Athens, and on Thursday is staging a collision between the two surfacely opposite cities.
Millennial punk band Peekaboos connected with Lute with the help of Dark Circles and fellow Chicago band Soddy Daisy. Peekaboos guitarist/shrieker Shannon Candy grew up in th city, and used to hop the train to get to the underground shrine Fireside Bowl, or, as she put it, “a super run down bowling alley that hosted all ages punk shows.” Hyperactive scene it is, Peekaboos has networked with national musicians who toured through Chicago, allowing the band to hold their tour largely south of the Ohio River.
Candy remarked her group is “spoiled” to live in such a mecca, but drummer Michael Sunnycide said they had “learned to to not underestimate the power of the whole country’s local music community.”
Conversely, the boys of Dweeb all went to high school in Athens, and are now enrolled in OU and Hocking. Punk is without borders, though, especially for socially critical bands. While no music has yet been released by the quartet, bassist Wyatt Moretti-Dobo claimed the legendarily anarchist Crass as an “ideology and activism” influence, and the Peekaboos song “Western Fall” laments the “government cheese” that “the kids all need to keep their stomachs full” (vocalist Matt Muffin based his polemic sneers on experiences as a teacher on Chicago’s squalid West Side). Dweeb will set itself apart from the garage-punk stylings of Peekaboos and Nightstalker with some funk and Black Sabbath influence.
Nightstalker, fittingly, will be the adhesive of the night, the glue between Dweeb and Peekaboos. The youngest and most sinister of Christopher Lute’s three bands (other two are Weird Science and Valleyboys) will expose its Frankenstein experiment called “dark surfadelic music.”
“It’s like an art project about a bad trip,” Lute said. “I really like the idea of juxtaposing negative or melancholy lyrics with uplifting musical parts and vice-versa.”
With B-horror imagery and gothic lyrics, how perfect for Nightstalker to parade itself on a night but a few weeks away from All Hallow’s Eve. The band’s studio debut, an eponymous 12-song cassette tape, was recorded in Chicago by only Lute and current bassist Loganbach, with help from “Chicago comrades.”
Music begins at 9 P.M. and costs $3.
