catching up with depressed mood

anyone who actually reads this space has noticed the recent lack of updates. this began with the cessation of functionality of my former camera, which fried my new year's eve pictures in its death throes. sadly, no one else i can find online seems to have taken up the slack and posted pictures of the evening. which is a shame, because it was really enjoyable. it was a dream lineup of local bands, some of which also happened to include people i know. so i grabbed tickets and dragged my friends robin and angel to the indie rock spectacular at mercury lounge.

the main treat of autodrone was guitarist jeremy alisauskas' range of distorted/chorused/delayed textures, as well as when the hot topic-clad bassist pounded out punky fuzzed-out lines. we enjoyed the energy of stylofone and levy, with the former provoking more early-80's rock flashbacks, and the latter adding a more alternative edge and greater professionalism. they also gave out very cool-looking CDRs, although mine unfortunately didn't play. the winter pageant stood out in the lineup with their ethereal prog-rock, the balance between atmospheric and hard-hitting sounds being mixed better than the previous times i've seen them. however, for most of the crowd, the peak came with the arrival of mtvu stars asobi seksu, who mix early-80's new wave pop tunes with early 90's slashing shoegazer guitars, although sadly they ignore their softer material live. as the band cleared the stage close to 1am, much of the audience dispersed, no doubt heading to promised afterparties, post-show meetups, or places that offered free entry after a certain hour, like i heard motherfucker did. those people missed out on one of the greatest new(ish) bands in nyc, other passengers (pictured above). once people get over their addiction to simple 3-minute postpunk pop songs (which are nice too), hopefully they will recognize this band for their slow-developing but incendiary greatness. that night i was finally able to pick up a copy of their debut CDEP (they had a rough CDR demo before that), and it shows serious promise. it's definitely worth picking up, but if they can find an engineer/producer who can give the recordings the same explosive punch of their live performances, they will be truly on their way.


the title of this post is a paraphrase/parody of the cheesy US-only early hits collection catching up with depeche mode; "depressed mood" is one of several common mocking variations on their name.