Show report: Bug Moment, Graham Hunt, Dusk, Disq at High Noon Saloon

I haven’t done a show report in a long time because I barely go to shows anymore! Actually, though, this fall I went to three. First, The Beths, opening for The National, but I didn’t stay for The National because I don’t know or care about them; I just wanted to see the latest geniuses of New Zealand play “Expert in a Dying Field”

Next was the Violent Femmes, playing their self-titled debut in order. They used to tour a lot and I used to see them a lot, four or five times in college and grad school I think. They never really grow old and Gordon Gano never stops sounding exactly like Gordon Gano. A lot of times I go to reunion shows and there are a lot of young people who must have come to the band through their back catalogue. Not Violent Femmes! 2000 people filling the Sylvee and I’d say 95% were between 50 and 55. One of the most demographically narrowcast shows I’ve ever been to. Maybe beaten out by the time I saw Black Francis at High Noon and not only was everybody exactly my age they were also all men. (Actually, it was interesting to me there were a lot of women at this show! I think of Violent Femmes as a band for the boys.)

But I came in to write about the show I saw this weekend, four Wisconsin acts playing the High Noon. I really came to see Disq, whose single “Daily Routine” I loved when it came out and I still haven’t gotten tired of. Those chords! Sevenths? They’re something:

Dusk was an Appleton band that played funky/stompy/indie, Bug Moment had an energetic frontwoman named Rosenblatt and were one of those bands where no two members looked like they were in the same band. But the real discovery of the night, for me, was Graham Hunt, who has apparently been a Wisconsin scene fixture forever. Never heard of the guy. But wow! Indie power-pop of the highest order. When Hunt’s voice cracks and scrapes the high notes he reminds me a lot of the other great Madison noisy-indie genius, Graham Smith, aka Kleenex Girl Wonder, who recorded the last great album of the 1990s in his UW-Madison dorm room. Graham Hunt’s new album, Try Not To Laugh, is out this week. ”Emergenct Contact” us about as pretty and urgent as this kind of music gets. 

And from his last record, If You Knew Would You Believe it, “How Is That Different,” which rhymes blanket, eye slit, left it, and orbit. Love it! Reader, I bought a T-shirt.