The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Boy Crisis
10:00
Patrick Cleandenim
9:00

Darwin Deez
8:00
Class Actress
7:00

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Tue 8/25
Notes:
21+
Doors: 7:00 PM / Show: 7:00 PM
$10
Tickets
Boy Crisis
official website
myspace
A couple of years back, Newsweek ran a cover story about falling standards among young men, a problem the magazine attributed to the "biologically disrespectful education system" as well as to the different ways in which male (cf female) brains are hardwired. Their term for this phenomenon was "Boy Crisis", and it was treated with the utter solemnity it deserves by all right-thinking adults. Apart from five twentysomethings from Brooklyn who just thought it would be a great name for a pop group. Besides, these five young men were clearly not suffering from boy-crisis syndrome so it wasn't really their problem. For starters, they attended the same prestigious hall of learning, Connecticut's Wesleyan Art College, as MGMT (and the soon-to-be-fawned-over Amazing Baby). And furthermore (your honour) the music they had begun to make was both ingenious and irresistible: late-70s punk-funk with a tough veneer and a mid-80s gloss, like Duran Duran if they'd come from the Bowery not Birmingham, or Palladium if they'd managed to get their debut album remixed by Justice before they got dropped.

You will be hearing a lot about Boy Crisis over the next few months because they are the subject of hysterical hype and rampant A&R buzz, because they make music based on a shared love of Prince, Talking Heads, Chic, Pet Shop Boys and Zapp – and for once it actually sounds like it – and because they are the hottest electronic pop group to emerge from America since, ooh, MGMT at least. Only, as that list of influences suggests, they're more funktronic than psychedelic: Studio 54 disco with a hint of CBGBs grit. They've got a song called 1981 – a choice of title which seems to acknowledge that said year was the greatest ever for pop music, and they might not be wrong – and it's steeped in 1981-era punk-funk: it reeks of Ze Records, it genuflects before Contort Yourself by James Chance & the Contortions, only it's slower and more sultry, with a shinier production, crisp handclaps, references to Mao Tse Tung and a series of ever-rising falsetto shrieks from Victor Vasquez. Put it this way: if it had been on Sign O' the Times it would have been the third best track; if it had been on Lovesexy it would have been the standout. Get the picture? It's gorgeous.
-Paul Lester, guardian.co.uk
Patrick Cleandenim
official website
myspace
Darwin Deez
myspace
Darwin Deez is a p(r)op master. He plays a 4-string electric guitar in his own invented, secret tuning. He was raised by Baba Lovers (followers of Avatar Meher Baba, like Pete Townshend) in Chapel Hill, NC. In 2003, he left Wesleyan University to start a band in New York City. Their current live set features his original songs, harsh electronic noise, and bouts of synchronized dancing set to custom pop mashups. They toured from New York to Georgia in the summer of 2008. Klaus Fiehe (\"the German John Peel\") dubbed it off the internet and played it on Einslive. Darwin\'s music was also recently on XFM, and on the TV shows LA Ink, and Free Radio. He also toured Europe in winter 2009, playing guitar and opening for Creaky Boards, who recently made a media splash involving Coldplay. Bassist Mash Deez, also from Chapel Hill, is also a master tap dancer and was recently featured on the cover of Dance Magazine. Darwin is planning to release his debut album in early 2010. He is 25.
Class Actress
official website
myspace
Once the solo project of singer Elizabeth Harper, Class Actress is now a fully-formed band, hustling around Brooklyn's preening, synth-obsessed pop scene like Chairlift's alien-abducted stepsiblings. "Careful What You Say" gets its kicks from ballooning square waves much like the aforementioned trio, only instead of grabbing for the hook they're content to float amongst their own self-created fog. - RCRDLBL

"Harper is a beauty with a voice like a sleepy winter afternoon. Alternately playful and melancholy, Harper’s songwriting is reminiscent of the Smiths.” – TimeOutNY

“Don't feel conflicted by the singer-songwriter tag in front of Elizabeth Harper's name on any billing. While the tag is accurate, the Brooklyn-based musician is less Tori Amos and more Christina Rosenvinge, or even New Order's Bernand Sumner. Something vaguely Northern English afflicts Ms. Harper's otherwise bubbly music, as if the threat or memory of melancholy is never far away. Ms. Harper effortlessly swings from variations on late 1960s French pop to 1970s California folk-pop, but something mid- 1980s Manchester never feels too far behind her lovely voice.” – New York Sun

“A patch of green, Anglophilic moss thriving in the shade of the monolith that is Brooklyn’s music scene. With Harper rightfully compared to a female version of the beloved Mozzer, it’s no wonder she was first signed overseas by London’s Angular Records. Impeccable in both presentation (her demo's wax-paper packaging was covered in black-ink calligraphy) and performance, her songs recall Orange Juice, Aztec Camera, and New Order at their most tasteful." – Flavorpill

“We’ve gone on record repeatedly about how much we love Elizabeth Harper, and we stand by our assertion that she’s fronting one of the most promising bands in New York City.” – L Magazine

"Elizabeth Harper still seems posied to break pretty big, and were puling for it to happen. She's got one of the best voices we've ever heard and her taste in accompaniment is impeccable" - L Magazine
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