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The Secret Handshake/Family Force 5
7 p.m. Monday, October 1. Creepy Crawl, 3524 Washington Boulevard
By Jaime Lees
Published: September 26, 2007

If someone said to you, “Hey, you should totally check out the Secret Handshake. They’re, like, ambient electro-emo,” what would you do? You’d want to throw up into your Emily the Strange lunch box, right? Well, the truth is: The band’s not as bad as you’d expect. The tunes are just ambient enough to be pretty, electro enough to be interesting and hardly emo at all if you ignore the (infrequent) lyrics. There’s an indie splash and some pop sprinkles in there, too; at times the better songs sound like a teenage version of the Cars. But if you’re over the age of 21, it’s not going to get you dancin’. Just stay at the bar and leave this one to the kids. Family Force 5 headlines.

• 09-26-07 Riverfront Times (St. Louis) - article link
• 10-15-07 reprint in the Dallas Observer (Dallas) - article link
• Secret Handshake - website

Melvins/Big Business
8 p.m. Wednesday, September 26. Pop’s, 1403 Mississippi Avenue, Sauget, Illinois.
By Jaime Lees
Published: September 19, 2007

Beware, children: The Melvins, lordly gods of bone-crunching sludge-grunge, are coming to melt your eardrums. Longtime members Buzz Osborne (exquisite thrashing, psychotic vocals) and Dale Crover (swamp-heavy drum thuds) have joined with Big Business bandmates Jared Warren (bass) and Coady Willis (drums) to breed a new, ultra-heavy sound. (That’s right, the Melvins now have two drummers.) Touring on the bombastic new album, (A) Senile Animal, the band has designed a way to reign all night. Big Business will be the opening band, but before the music there is a screening of A Purge of Dissidents, a short animated film with a soundtrack by the Melvins and friends, including Jon Spencer and Jesus Lizard’s David Yow.

• article link
• Melvins - website