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House and Home: the Bright Future of Richmond’s Alt-Rock Scene

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The Richmond-based alt-rock band are moving forward from their debut EP into greener musical pastures.

What would it look like if a Richmond-based alt-rock band shared a name with one of the nation’s leading home decor and interior design magazines?

Enter House and Home. The band, formed in early 2017, is comprised of lead vocalist and guitarist Pat Williams, guitarist and vocalist Joey Grammer, bassist Cole Bennett, and drummer Matt Stumpf. 

Williams and Bennett met when their previous bands were on tour together in 2016, while they were both still in high school. Later, Stumpf actually replaced Williams as the drummer in another band. When that band fell by the wayside, the stars seemingly aligned, allowing the four twenty-somethings to come together and create their own music.

“The timeline of this band has just fit the perfect spot,” Bennett said.  “We’ve all been playing music together and around each other for a really long time. We’ve all been grinding it out, and it’s slowly built up to where it is now.”

“Where it is now” is further along than you might expect an alt-rock band from Richmond to have gotten in only two years. The band recently completed a small two-week tour across Texas opening for Nominee, an Austin-based alt-rock band with a sound similar to their own. And back at home, House and Home have gathered a sizeable young following of dedicated, passionate fans — an opportunity any young, up-and-coming band would kill for.

House and Home. Photo by Adam Stokes, via House And Home/Facebook

“We realized after doing a little bit of touring that we’re really lucky to be from where we are,” Williams said, “because people are really supportive and really open to listening to new things.  They’re eager to learn and listen to new bands, especially if [the band] is from the city they live in. It’s a very special thing you don’t realize is there until you go somewhere else and try to do the same thing.”

“We’re really lucky to be a part of the Richmond music scene,” Bennett added.  “It’s become a hub.”

Although his head is kept looking down on his kit for most of the show, Stumpf said he cherishes the moments when he gets to really take in what an impact the band is making.

“When I do look up and see people paying attention and giving a shit — that’s the coolest part for me, because for us, this is just something we love to do,” Stumpf said. “The fact that we’re doing it in such a real and genuine way, and that we’re doing it for ourselves and that actually resonates with other people, is insane.”

Record sales and critical acclaim be damned. Grammer said the band hopes to continue on with their original passion for creating music that they themselves enjoy. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

“I’m not here to be a rock star and make a bunch of money or anything,” Grammer said. “I’m just hanging out, jamming with my friends.”

House and Home’s heavy, heartfelt songs, both lyrically and sonically, can be credited to all four members of the band.

“The writing process for us is very collaborative,” Williams said. “A lot of bands will have one person write everything, but we just get down in our basement together and write songs. It’s hard to do it any other way.”

The band only has six songs released currently. Four of those were a part of their Fully Grown EP, which released in 2018. Their newest single, “Wander,” has been by far their most popularly received, and has generated a lot of anticipation for new music, which the band said is on the way in 2020.

Their next hometown show is going to be pivotal for the band, according to Bennett, as they plan to begin phasing out of playing the songs from Fully Grown and into songs that fans can get excited to hear on an upcoming album.

“[The new album] reaches into some different areas of alt-rock,” Williams said.  “It’s very different than songs that we’ve released before. There’s some grunge, and there’s some softer stuff.”

“We’re super proud of this record, and we think it’s a really cool direction for us to go,” Williams continued, “so we’re doing everything exactly how we want to do it, in the best way possible to make it as cool of an experience as possible for everybody that listens to it.”

Ultimately, every member of the band said their goal as a group is simple — make enough money to buy the “House and Home” domain name away from the magazine. After that, who knows?

House And Home plays Tuesday, October 22 (that’s tonight!) at the Canal Club, with U.K. hardcore punk band Trash Boat, as well as Sleave, Hold Close, Nine Line, and The Second After. The show begins at 6 p.m. Tickets are $13 in advanced, and can be purchased at Eventbrite.

Top Photo by Ethan Edghill, via House And Home/Facebook

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

VA Shows You Must See This Week: September 26 – October 2

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FEATURED SHOW
Friday, September 28, 8 PM
MDC, The Elected Officials, Cult Of Frost, Lipid, The Alex Jonestown Massacre @ Strange Matter – $12 (order tickets HERE)
I grew up going to punk and metal shows, losing my mind over harsh music with provocative lyrics. I grew up with radical left-wing politics, which are even farther outside the mainstream than they were when I was a teenager, being treated as perfectly normal ways of seeing the world (and to be honest, I still think they are). Therefore, when I see that a band whose nominal acronym has meant (many things, but most often) “Millions Of Dead Cops” is coming to town, all I think is “Oh wow, classic punk band with tremendous career gracing us all with their presence! FEATURED.”

So maybe this isn’t the most family-friendly pick. For those of you who that bugs, I’d recommend scrolling down to the Steely Dan blurb below. For the cool kids among you who stuck around, though, let me explain why MDC are both outstanding and important. Their 1980 debut single, “John Wayne Was A Nazi,” was a groundbreaking early example of re-examining the myths of pop culture to expose the racism, misogyny, and xenophobia lurking at their heart. Their 1982 debut LP, Millions Of Dead Cops, brought us the classic left-wing protest slogan, “No War! No KKK! No Fascist USA!” And it isn’t just their earliest material that deserves celebration; by their 1987 third LP, This Blood’s For You, they had become “Millions Of Damn Christians,” and were infusing their classic speedy hardcore with complex song structures and mind-bending riffs that they still delivered at a million miles an hour.

They’re still relevant today, too. In 2016, they rerecorded their classic tune “Born To Die” as an anti-Trump anthem (chanting “No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!”), then followed that with their first album in over a decade (this time under the name “Millions of Deceived Citizens”), Mein Trumpf, which showed that the hardcore veterans (who still feature three of their four original members) are as fired-up, pissed-off, and full of raging punk tunes as ever. They’ll be joined by fellow politically-informed Texas punk rippers The Elected Officials, as well as Ohio’s Cult Of Frost, who are, of all things, a Celtic Frost tribute act who only play the Hellhammer demos and the first three albums (aw, Monotheist though…). Local freakers Lipid and The Alex Jonestown Massacre will get this started in fine fashion so you can circle-pit all night. No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA!

Wednesday, September 26, 8 PM
1476, Paint Store, Desert Altar, Vulcanite @ Strange Matter – $8 in advance/$10 day of show (order tickets HERE)
As a relatively old lady who was born exactly 500 years after the year Salem, Massachusetts band 1476 named themselves after, I’m a little fuzzy on what was actually going on that year, but if you check Wikipedia, you’ll find that notorious Romanian prince Vlad The Impaler was killed that year, and I think that gives you somewhat of an idea. This band pulls from all sorts of dark, mysterious genres of guitar-based music, from ambient folk and moody progressive rock to hardcore punk and black metal.

On their 2017 album, Our Season Draws Near, they create a foreboding musical atmosphere highlighted by passionate vocals and intricate multilayered guitar riffing, all driven by a ferocious rhythm section. They’re sure to take you on a dark journey of the mind when they hit Strange Matter’s stage tonight, and they’ll be aided in their mission by a trio of local bands who all capture a different aspect of 1476’s multi-genre melange: Paint Store, whose technical instrumental metal sound summons memories of long-gone Richmond legends Breadwinner, for one. For another, Desert Altar, who take a fascinating and fun approach to the whole retro-doom thing. And then there’s the groovy sludge of Vulcanite, starting this night off right. Get into it.

Thursday, September 27, 7 PM
Low Cut Connie, Ruby Boots @ Capital Ale House Music Hall – $15 (order tickets HERE)
When you think of rock n’ roll these days, the piano is not the first instrument you think of. However, we’d be fools to ignore the legacy this instrument has in the history of the music: founding figures like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis used their pianos to generate firestorms of rockin’ energy that set the dancehalls and roadhouses of the mid-50s American South on fire. And now, 60 years later, Low Cut Connie frontman Adam Weiner is coming to Richmond to do it all over again.

Low Cut Connie have a hellacious reputation for killer live shows, and in an NPR interview earlier this year, Weiner talked about his onstage activity, and how he can’t stand to sit still in front of his piano when there’s a crowd to interact with. It’s the fact that he’s able to mix it up, getting sweaty and wild onstage every night, while continuing to crank out the old-school country-tinged rock n’ roll sound of Low Cut Connie — as displayed on new LP Dirty Pictures (Part 2) — with flawless aplomb that makes this group an absolutely unmissable live act.  Bloodshot recording artist Ruby Boots, who’s got a raging femme energy and a powerful country-punk sound, kicks things off in a manner worth arriving early for. So you know what to do — get down to Capital Ale House tomorrow night and see it all for yourself!

Friday, September 28, 6 PM
Come Clean, Sharp Sleeves, Nine Line, We Call This Courage @ Cornerstone Cigar Bar – Free!
I may write a weekly column about music, but y’all, I’ve never claimed to be the coolest girl in the world. I just know what I like. Honestly, that’s a whole lot of stuff, and sometimes it’s stuff that no one else seems to pick up on. About a decade back, the thing I was into that no one else (or at least, no one else over 25) was picking up on was “easycore,” a genre that mixed the chunky guitars of melodic hardcore with the catchiness and emotional tone of pop-punk. A whole bunch of bands were doing this par excellence circa 2010 — Four Year Strong, Fireworks, Set Your Goals — but they all either changed their sound or broke up, and it’s been years now since I heard a really good example of the sound. I miss it.

That’s why I’m stoked to hear about North Carolina’s Come Clean coming to town. Their new EP, From Down The Street, isn’t quite out yet, but their 2016 debut, Won’t Wait, hits all the same pleasure centers for me as classic New Found Glory and first-LP Saves The Day did, and I can never get enough of stuff like that. They’ll be coming to the Cornerstone Cigar Bar (really? I hope they don’t allow smoking in the show room) in the company of Sharp Sleeves, who hail from Blacksburg and have a bit of a Florida tinge (a la Hot Water Music) to their pop-punk. With the addition of RVA locals Nine Line and We Call This Courage, you’re looking at a stacked bill of mid-Atlantic pop-punk excellence. Best of all, this show is free! That might even be worth braving a bit of cigar smoke for (be ready to wash everything you wore immediately afterwards though).

Saturday, September 29, 8 PM
Centerfolds, Something More, Nominee, House & Home @ Strange Matter – $10 in advance/$12 day of show (order tickets HERE)
One good pop-punk show deserves another, right? And this time, the headliners are local. Centerfolds have a bit of an easycore connection, as some members of Centerfolds used to play music with members of RVA’s leading easycore export, Broadside. However, since their 2017 LP, Bad Heaven, they’ve definitely moved in a more angst-ridden emotional direction — the desperation in their vocals and the minor-chord moods of the guitars are sure to make this band a fave for anyone who stays up late blasting Real Friends and Knuckle Puck records with the lights off (yes, that has definitely been me at times).

Now, if you were paying attention to this column last year around this time, you probably noticed the Common Grounds fest, an eight-band pop-punk package show that featured not only Centerfolds but also the other two headliners on this bill, Baltimore’s Something More and RVA’s own Nominee. I have never hidden the fact that I love Nominee — last year’s Drag Me Out EP was a big personal fave — and Something More have won me over with excellent tunes like “Brentwood Park” (from their split with Carry The Banner) and “All My Best Friends Are Dogs” (from their Dogs EP). Local newcomers House & Home kick this one off, and it’s gonna rule. Get stoked.

Sunday, September 30, 8 PM
Ocean Heights, Venus Milo, Cupid McCoy, Solace Sovay, Missangelbird @ The Camel – $10 (order tickets HERE)
A decade after we first learned that Beyonce was a Grizzly Bear fan, the ever-increasing cross-pollination between the worlds of indie and r&b is a well-established reality. However, there’s still a lot of new territory to explore in the intersections between the two genres, and New Jersey’s Ocean Heights are one of the first groups to start mapping that interstitial space out. The results they’ve generated, showcased most prominently on recent single “No Waves,” are both fascinatingly unpredictable and pleasing in the extreme.

Mixing the sort of jangly guitar that early 80s UK bands like Orange Juice and Tears For Fears were drawing from 70s R&B records anyway with a smooth soul vocal and electronic sound results in some incredibly delicious tunes, the sort of thing that will appeal to anyone who ever wished Chromeo were more sincere, or Mac DeMarco had a bit more funk to his sound. A whole bunch of local groups on a similar tip, including up-and-coming standouts Cupid McCoy, the excellently-named Missangelbird, and the dirty-faced, angel-voiced boys of Venus Milo, are also on the bill. Solace Sovay, who are a bit closer to the indie-shoegaze side of things, will make an appearance to start things out and get the atmosphere in The Camel perfectly aligned for a night of musical deliciousness.

Monday, October 1, 7:30 PM
Steely Dan @ Altria Theater – $49.50 – $149.50 (order tickets HERE)
Would you believe that one of the highest-selling, most-played artists of the 70s and 80s, one of the best-produced and most polished-sounding bands of all time, were also a celebration of decadence with a name derived from a sex toy in William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch? Well, it’s true; not only is that really where Steely Dan’s name comes from, singer Donald Fagen loved to write lyrics glorifying debauched behavior, from giving your phone number to a woman marrying one of your friends in case the relationship doesn’t work out (“Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”) to gratuitous drunk driving (“Deacon Blues”) to getting ratted out by a friend and busted for drugs at Bard College (“My Old School”). So much for your family-friendly alternate show pick, huh?

After the 2017 death of founding guitarist Walter Becker, Steely Dan aren’t quite the same as they once were, but singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen is still holding it down behind the mic, and anyone who ever listened to their records knows that the best element of Steely Dan’s many classic progressive rock albums is the top-notch work from hired-gun studio musicians under Fagen and Becker’s direction. Rest assured the backing band will be a thousand percent on point at this show, and Fagen will sing just as wonderfully as ever about major dudes and Haitian divorces; it’ll be totally worth the $50 second-balcony tickets. Get yours now.

Tuesday, October 2, 7 PM
Death Bells, Narrow Head, True Body, Serqet @ Capital Ale House Music Hall – $10 (order tickets HERE)
I love the way the hardcore kids who are hitting their late 20s these days are all going full-on goth. Something about having that sort of musical background makes bands do a really good job at the whole dark, moody postpunk thing — witness Iceage, Ceremony (the CA one, not the VA one that’s been goth the whole time), and quite a few other bands. Death Bells, who started out in Australia but are located in Cali these days, have a similar thing going on.

Their most recent single, “Echoes,” uses wire-tight guitar leads and foreboding synths to create an atmosphere that is then infused with a dark, spectral energy by their rumbling rhythm section and the powerful, hypnotic voice of frontman Will Canning. For a band that had already hit a high-water mark with 2017 debut LP Standing At The Edge Of The World, it’s a pleasantly surprising ascension to new heights. That’s certainly something you’ll want to experience, as is the set that you’ll get from Death Bells tourmates Narrow Head, who are tapping into that same sort of super-loud shoegaze sound that Jesu and Nothing have done so well with. Norfolk post-punkers True Body and RVA goth-peacepunk band Serqet round out this incredible bill, taking place within the refined halls of Capital Ale House. How strangely appropriate.

Bonus Hampton Roads Picks:

Friday, September 28, 7:30 PM
Meg Myers, Adam Jones @ The NorVA – $18 in advance/$22 at the door (order tickets HERE)
Meg Myers is a new discovery for me, but I really dig her. Her latest album, Take Me To The Disco, has a variety of different sounds going on at once, to the point that it’s hard to know what genre it is or how to even describe it. The best I can tell you is that it should appeal to fans of everything from Bat For Lashes to Garbage to Florence And The Machine; it has that sort of dark postpunk appeal while also incorporating a strong electronically-based pop songwriting sense.

Despite the use of the word “disco” in the title of her latest record, there’s no dance music here — you’re more likely to find crunchy guitars running up against programmed beats, like the best of the post-Nirvana 90s meeting the progressive alt sounds of the 21st century. It is at times tough to categorize, but it’s just as tough to dislike — Meg Myers is a talented lady with a ton of emotional intensity injected into her music, and you’re sure to feel the effects, especially when it’s all happening right in front of you in a live environment.

Saturday, September 29, 7 PM
Super Whatevr, Beach Goons, Dube, Morningside, Party Wave @ 37th and Zen – $12 in advance/$15 day of show (order tickets HERE)
I’ve seen a lot of different ways to render the word “whatever” over the years, from people making a “W” with their fingers to a fad amongst my friends back at the dawn of the current millennium to say “whatev” or even “whatev2k” (boy, that’s aged poorly). I’ve never seen “whatevr” before, but in this time of dropping vowels to look cool, I’m not surprised — just kind of amazed that Super Whatevr don’t write their name in all caps. But I’m actually glad they don’t, because this California alt-rock band have a much more fun and creative sound than I’d expect from any band pulling the MGMT move in 2018.

Their new album, Never Nothing, is full of catchy choruses and bouncy rhythms, mixing a bit of the ol’ emo revival with that disco-fied garage rock thing that a bunch of bands used to make hay while the sun was shining around the turn of the millennium — think the Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, etc. Why am I talking so much about the Y2K era? Maybe this band put me in the mood — but considering how great music was back then, it’s certainly not a bad thing. They’re joined by fellow Californian rock revivalists Beach Goons, who are capable of evoking everything from mid-60s garage raunch to late 50s teenage-queen balladry. Canadian group Dube will also be on the bill, bringing a similarly fun brand of loud-guitar rock n’ roll. If you wanna dance, this show is really where you’re gonna want to be this Saturday. These groups will get you moving.

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Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers–this week’s column has obviously already been written): [email protected] [and yeah, there’s plenty more of my writing to read over at GayRVA — come say hey.]

Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond

RVA Shows You Must See This Week: 9/20-9/26

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FEATURED SHOW
Saturday, September 23, 8 PM
The Broadberry presents RVA Live! feat. Matthew E. White, Natalie Prass, Tim Barry, Bio Ritmo, Clair Morgan @ Carpenter Theatre at Dominion Arts Center – $10-80 (order tickets HERE)
OK yes I am usually on some more underground/DIY type stuff than anything that takes place at the Carpenter Theatre but sometimes something too big and important and cool to ignore comes along and you just gotta send people to the big bourgeois theatre in the center of town, right? Well, that’s my opinion anyway. This event is also being presented by The Broadberry, a relatively small venue with deep connections to the local independent music scene, so its DIY bona fides are pretty well beyond question.

Therefore, I must tell you that something amazing and very difficult to rationalize missing is happening downtown at the Carpenter Theatre this Saturday night, and tickets start at a very reasonable $10, so there’s really no excuse not to be in attendance. RVA Live! is an evening featuring several of the Richmond scene’s most noteworthy veteran artists–everyone from salsa stalwarts Bio Ritmo to punk-gone-country troubadour Tim Barry–performing in collaboration with the Richmond Symphony. With orchestration and arrangements being handled by Trey Pollard of Spacebomb Records, who has done string arrangements for artists ranging from Matthew E. White to Foxygen and The Waterboys; along with Bio Ritmo members Marlysse Simmons and Toby Whitaker; this is going to be a collaborative project on multiple levels, bringing the best of Richmond’s singer-songwriter community together with the leading lights of our local classical music scene–a scene that popular-music fanatics like myself, and probably yourself, tend to sleep on.

With Matthew E. White and Natalie Prass at the top of this bill, you know Spacebomb is going to be representing itself admirably at this performance. Bio Ritmo’s Latin swing and jazzy funk influences will get a whole new twist when recontextualized through the lens of the Richmond Symphony, and will add a multicultural strain to an evening that could get decidedly monochromatic without them. Plus, we’ll get the mathematical pop of Clair Morgan and the austere country blues punk of Tim Barry, embellished with the sorts of layers neither of their sounds generally contain. All of this will be fascinating for any music lover. And with so many hotshot performers on the bill, you’re sure to get caught up in the awesomeness of it all, even if seeing the symphony at the Carpenter Theatre generally isn’t your thing.

Wednesday, September 20, 8 PM
Polyphia, Night Idea, Paint Store @ The Broadberry – $15 (order tickets HERE)
The worlds of screamo, math-rock, prog-metal, and metalcore have some pretty surprising intersection points at times, and the whole prog-metalcore scene that’s built up around bands like Periphery is one of the strangest and most interesting ones. Polyphia are a metallic instrumental quartet of young post-metalcore dudes with swoop haircuts and skills for days, and they’re hitting Richmond tonight on a day off from their current tour opening for prog-metalcore pioneers Between The Buried And Me. If you want to dig into the shred-heavy instrumental end of this whole scene, this show is your perfect chance to do it at a relatively small venue for a reasonable ticket price.

Polyphia’s latest release, The Most Hated EP, sees them dipping into more electronic layers, including programmed beats and synthesized background swells. However, the guitar pyrotechnics remain on full display, with occasional licks copped from the dawn-of-the-90s micro-trend of blazing metal guitarists putting out instrumental solo albums. What I’m saying is, these guys have a definite Vai/Satriani tinge to their djent-inspired riff fests these days, and the intersection of these surprisingly congruent sounds is a lot of fun to explore. With local openers consisting of poppy math-rockers Night Idea (the only band this night to feature a vocalist) and fellow math-obsessed instrumental shredders Paint Store, this show is guaranteed to fill your quota for riffage, even if it does run slightly low on vocalizations. You definitely won’t get bored in their absence.

Thursday, September 21, 6 PM
El Malpais, Candy Spots, Worse Curses @ Champion RVA – Free!
And we progress from one instrumental group to another as we go through this week’s picks, landing once again at Champion RVA on Thursday night to shed the night-before-payday blues with some excellent free sounds from both local and touring artists. The stars of this Thursday night’s show will be El Malpais (“the bad country,” if my rusty high-school Spanish hasn’t failed me), who come from Charlotte, NC with an original and fascinating instrumental sound pairing guitar and drum rhythms with flute to create the kind of unusual and engaging sound that “jazz flute” might have conjured up in your head if it weren’t for that phrase’s eternal association with Anchorman.

Regardless of whether you would ever expect a group based around flute melodies to be able to rock with aplomb, you should definitely be in the house when El Malpais takes the stage, because they’re guaranteed to erase all doubts. Their excellent self-titled LP from earlier this year is full of somewhat foreboding tunes accented by riveting melodies, which create the overall impression of tiptoeing through a forest late in the afternoon, on the hunt for forgotten old huts where strange creatures may or may not still live. OK, maybe I’ve read too many horror novels in my time, but still, this band rocks. They’ll be joined on this bill by local alt-garage rockers Candy Spots and catchy up-and-comers Worse Curses for an evening of jams that would be cheap at twice the price (because after all, zero dollars x2 is still zero dollars).

Friday, September 22, 7 PM
Madeline Kenney, Rikki Shay, Majjin Boo, Minor Poet @ Gallery 5 – $5 in advance/$7 day of show (order tickets HERE)
The Broadberry’s showing up all over town this week. This show, which is actually the night before that RVA Live! show up at the top of the column (my chronology’s a little weird, deal with it), sees the larger venue collaborating with generally awesome (and kinda cavernous itself) DIY art gallery space Gallery 5 to present an evening headlined by Oakland singer-songwriter Madeline Kenney. You may be unfamiliar with this artist, but Kenney’s brand new album, Night Night At The First Landing, gives all the reason you need to change that in a hurry. In a manner that is spiritually if not entirely sonically similar to alt-rock shredder Marnie Stern, Kenney takes that whole singer/guitarist/songwriter mold and smashes it over her knee on her new album, integrating dreamy guitar textures with an ambient overall sound and topping them all off with evocative vocal melodies and profound lyrics that cut to the heart of the emotional issues that plague so many young women in this world.

Expect her live performance to do just as much to both destroy and elevate your expectations from a “female singer-songwriter” (kill that cliche forever please). Kenney’s openers on this bill definitely reflect the Broadberry’s involvement in this evening, with recent Broadberry performers Rikki Shay and Minor Poet making a rare appearance at Gallery 5. That’s good, though, maybe it’ll bring some new people out to check out this excellent venue. Madeline Kenney is really all the inducement you, the super clued-in RVA show attendee, should need to add this show to your calendar, though. She’s worth the price of admission all by herself.

Saturday, September 23, 8 PM
Meg Mulhearn + Elisa Faires, Dazeases, Womajich Dialysiez, Rachel Lynch @ Vagabond – Free!
OK, this is two awesome free shows in the space of three days; you should definitely take advantage of this phenomenon, because it’s not something that occurs every week by any means. This evening over at up-and-coming new live music space Vagabond brings us a couple of heavy hitters in the ambient/experimental music world, on a collaborative tour linked to a still-in-production album-length collaboration that’s apparently on the way next year. You can get a preview of it this Saturday night at Vagabond though, and that’s certainly worth doing.

Meg Mulhearn is a violinist who has worked with US Christmas, Void Ensemble, and others, and releases solo recordings under the name Divine Circles. Elisa Faires is an experimental vocalist who has taken part in projects like Astral Magick Soundtrack and Xambuca. Both of these artists use electronic effects to loop, layer, and otherwise accent their instruments, and the two together bring to life a lush ambient soundscape that seems way bigger than anything two musicians can produce by themselves. Combined with the soulful vocal-driven ambience of Dazeases, the constantly-evolving improvisational experimental project Womajich Dialysiez, and experimental performance artist Rachel Lynch, this bill will explore all sorts of different musical and performative avenues, and should take the listener on a sonic journey that is not too frequently experienced, but all the richer for that fact.

Sunday, September 24, 6 PM
Common Ground Fest South, feat. Bren Lukens, Daisyhead, Centerfolds, Something More, Small Talks, Telltale, Nominee, She’s A Legend @ Strange Matter – $14 (order tickets HERE)
OK yes there’s always gonna be some emo coming to you in my column, and I guess this is where it arrives, because seriously–how could I neglect this excellent event? Common Ground Fest, a one-day mini-festival of emo/pop-punk bands put on by Common Ground Records and taking place in three different cities across the US over the course of this month, brings its southernmost incarnation to Richmond VA, and we are in for a treat. After all, not long after Modern Baseball co-founder Jake Ewald hit the Strange Matter stage with his Slaughter Beach Dog project, we get the other Modern Baseball co-founder, Bren Lukens, coming through with a solo acoustic performance. How sweet is that?

But that’s just the beginning. If you ask me, one of the biggest thrills on this whole lineup shows up down towards the bottom of the bill in the form of excellent up-and-coming emotionally-driven pop-punk band Nominee, whose January EP Drag Me Out has been a big one for me so far this year. Hearing songs like “Stay” and “White Water” live might just be enough to get me to pay the full ticket price all by itself. But even with both Bren Lukens and Nominee on this bill, so many other awesome groups are showing up that it’s hard to even attempt a full encapsulation. That said, Nashville’s Daisyhead, who released a killer LP In Case You Missed It on No Sleep earlier this year; and Baltimore’s Something More, who impressed all comers with their 2015 EP compilation Physical Copy, are just some of the additional reasons to make sure you’re right up front for this entire gig. I could say more, but this should be enough. Be there.

Monday, September 25, 8 PM
Love Roses, Brainbuster, The Donalds, Skumboyz @ McCormack’s Irish Pub – $5
I was introduced to Love Roses’ fun, speedy take on punk rock earlier this year when my admittedly pretty screamo band played a house show with them. It wasn’t exactly a predictable pairing, but we ended up meshing pretty well, and I really dug this band’s energetic rage. Since then, Love Roses have been busy, releasing a brand new split on local label Tired & Pissed with Fredericksburg punks Brainbuster, who by no coincidence at all are also on this bill. Love Roses and Brainbuster are just finishing up a tour together, and this is a much more predictable pairing of VA punk bands than anything involving my band would have been.

Brainbuster have a Dead Kennedys-ish sarcastic approach to their lyrics and an early-80s LA punk approach to their music, showing influence from bands like the Adolescents and Bad Religion as well as a snottier edge that gives the whole thing a harsh bite. That split is gonna be a real ripper when it hits, that’s one thing I know for sure. Local punks The Donalds and Skumboyz round out a lineup full of Tired & Pissed artists who are sure to please the circle-pitting punk fanatics of this town–of whom there are more than you think–as well as anyone who gets a kick out of speedy riffs that are both angry and fun.

Tuesday, September 26, 8 PM
Dryjacket, Eaves, Sleave, Nine Line @ Strange Matter – $10 in advance/$12 day of show (order tickets HERE)
And here we have some more emo, because it’s awesome. New Jersey’s Dryjacket really impressed many listeners, myself among them, with their debut full-length For Posterity. That album, released earlier this year, shows an introspective, multi-layered approach to the sort of emo-revival template that the best bands from that slowly-fading era are still building and improving upon. Dryjacket definitely demonstrates their own qualification for that top tier of still-extant emo bands with a sound incorporating the complex guitar arpeggios that led people to throw the term “twinkle” around a few years ago and some incredible pop choruses that seem to draw as much influence from The Beatles as from Dads–always a welcome phenomenon.

And how about the RVA bands on this bill? Well, Eaves has certainly shown their own bona fides in the whole introspective, multi-layered emo genre over the past little while, and their contribution to this show is therefore sure to be both apropos and entirely welcome. Sleave has a gruffer approach that draws a great deal from that whole vibe of bands like Hot Water Music or Latterman, but with a chunkier guitar sound that shows a bit more hardcore influence than you might expect. Newcomers Nine Line hark back to the 90s days of the more emotionally-driven Fat Wreck bands like Lagwagon or Good Riddance, which is a refreshing change. There’s definitely some daylight between these four bands, but all share a similar feel, one that’s sure to move you.

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Email me if you’ve got any tips for me about upcoming shows (that take place after the week this column covers–this week’s column has obviously already been written): [email protected] [the rvamag address isn’t working for some reason, I haven’t had time to look into it! Bear with me]