In the middle of a gloomy, drizzling freezing wet northeast week, a gem: Jack Daniel’s Presents Hand Crafted: A Celebration of Brooklyn Bicycle Builders. This event, at New York’s Knitting Factory, featured three of my favorite things, two of which are already apparent; whiskey and bicycles. The third is an easy guess as well, since this is a site dedicated to the most awesome new bands. Yep, there were performances by Brooklyn-based lo-fi garage band The Babies, and Long Island rockers Nude Beach.
The Babies started out as a side project between Cassie Ramone of Vivian Girls and Kevin Morby of Woods that they weren’t sure would ever be anything but that. A couple albums and smattering of 7-inches later, and it feels like The Babies are more than that, and are likely to be around for a while. The line down the block at door time was maybe a better indication of the draw of free whiskey specials and a giveaway of three hand-crafted bikes inspired by whiskey drinks, but when the raffle tickets for the bicycles had been drawn, and much whiskey had already been consumed, The Babies felt like the solid headliners of the night. Plenty of people sang along to both old and newer tunes, and even a soft-core mosh pit broke out. “Breakin’ the Law” (not a Judas Priest cover) stands out in my mind as the most fun singalong, and a great point and counterpoint between Morby and Ramone trading off lines, and then singing together “You were my partner in crime.”
Nude Beach, based on their name alone (which is a bit of a challenge trying to Google with more musically inclined results), I had assumed would be some strain of electronic pop. Then I was told they were rock n’ roll/Americana. Then I heard that they were reminiscent of The Replacements. To me, more than anything they sounded directly influenced by Teenage Fanclub. I guess that’s some easy ridin’ power pop. It wasn’t anything I felt like going crazy to, but there were moments when it possible. Front man Chuck on guitar had his pedal board to one side so he could stomp up a bit of psych FX now and then, and their last song had what was by far their coolest jam out. I wanted to hear more of that, after I knew they had it in them. But maybe that was the plan all along, come out like a bunch of regular guys singing about genuine regular guy stuff, and then all of a sudden they whip out some licks that shows you these regular guys don’t spend all their time gazing into a Gentleman Jack at the corner bar. They’re rockers who are pretty good at what they do. I’d check them out again even if whiskey specials weren’t involved.
The Babies have announced a string of Spring tour dates on their Facebook, most of which are in Europe after they play Primavera Sound Festival, which is very cool. Nude Beach have a couple of local shows, listed on their Angelfire site…maybe they are pretty punk after all.
