The Bowery Presents

The Mercury Lounge upcoming shows

Late Show

The Wave Pictures
10:00

The WoWz
9:15
Polite Sleeper
8:30

Venue:
The Mercury Lounge
Date:
Sun 3/28
Notes:
21+
Doors: 9:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
$10
Tickets
The Wave Pictures
official website
myspace
The Wave Pictures are David Tattersall, Franic Rozycki and Jonny ''Huddersfield'' Helm. In 1998 Franic and David lived in a village called Wymeswold where they started playing music together, with Hugh J. Noble on drums. The band was called Blind Summit. When Hugh decided he didn't want to play drums he went to Exeter to study Philosophy instead. The band changed it's name to The Wave Pictures. Hugh was replaced by several drummers, until Jonny "Huddersfield" Helm became the permanent replacement.

For a few years The Wave Pictures have played sporadically in the UK, France and New York. During this time highlights have included playing at the Mofo Festival in Paris at the invitation of friends Herman Dune, and playing shows with Herman Dune and The Jeffrey Lewis Band. David also sang The Wave Pictures song "Dust Off Your Heart" with Herman Dune on a radio session for the great John Peel. The Wave Pictures have also served as backing band and co-songwriters for John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, the results featuring on a seven-inch single released by 4AD records.

Not only did I appreciate his take-no-prisoners musical stylings but also the imaginative lyrical ideas I found mighty refreshing. This is a man who clearly harbours no ambition to be seen hobnobbing with Dido at the Met Bar and has opted instead to plough a righteous but lonely furrow.

-Nick Lowe
The WoWz
official website
myspace
The WoWz are a prolific three-piece miscellaneous band from New York City who comb (and combine) the eternal dolor of Hank Williams Sr. with the perverse humor of David Berman and the improbable harmonies of BEATLES FOR SALE. Since 2004, theyve recorded two full-length records and an EP.

Their debut, LONG GRAIN RIGHTS, was recorded in early 2004 at Balloon Heaven, an appalling dump of a Bensonhurst basement that has likewise captured the sounds of Adam Green, Herman Düne and Jeffrey Lewis. Released on NYCs Recommended If You Like Records, LONG GRAIN RIGHTS plays like a fermented solution of powdered sugar and baking soda - a compound as addictive as picking your scalp.

After completing that album, Sam James (guitar, bass, vocals), Simon Beins (guitars, vocals) and Johnny Dydo (drums, vocals) sought out the next basement they could find: Johnny's pop's laundry room in Yonkers. There, inspired by sawdust and commuters' fury, they continued to mutate, juxtaposing Sam and Simon's rebelliously cherubic voices with the electric flatulence of bass fuzz and the astonishingly ornithological indigestion of feedback.

In the meantime, The WoWz played frequent acoustic sets all over NYC and began to leave the subway long enough to play out of the city, hitching rides with pals like The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players, The Brunettes and David-Ivar Herman Düne.

In June 2004, The WoWz found yet another basement that would let them descend into it; and so they set up shop at Care-A-Lot Studios in Harlem and hastily recorded the 5-song NICOTINE BUBBLEGUM EP for Luv-A-Lot Records. Throughout 2005, The WoWz composed and recorded the soundtrack for Mosaic Films production KING CORN with producer Bo Ramsey, and released their second full-length, COOL DUMP (Luv-a-Lot / RiYL), a reaming tower of questionable matter lovingly groped by some and exasperated by many.

Like LONG GRAIN RIGHTS and NICOTINE BUBBLEGUM, COOL DUMP finds the band at the outer reaches of quirkiness, poised to teeter upon the precipice (and prepuce) of advisable beauty until they all fall down... and perhaps only then, after we've read their wills, might we understand what that name of theirs means.
Polite Sleeper
official website
myspace
Polite Sleeper is a folk punk mess and a story about starting over. Pretty simple stuff at times, with the songs raw and the shows sweaty. It's about doing more with less these days, from three piece kits to one guitar and one set of keys, but more important, PS is still a punk band. They're 100% DIY, choosing to record in living rooms and kitchens, exclusively. Debut CD/LP out February 2008 on Sabotage Records (Japanther, The Now Denial, Monster, Austin Lucas).
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