Back to School...With Bells On
By Lizz Kannenberg in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 14, 2009 6:00PM
Sorry about the late notice indie rock'n'rollers, but we’d be remiss not to mention the killer double-shoegaze-no-foam latte at the Empty Bottle tonight. Brooklyn’s gracefully futuristic School of Seven Bells is one of the most talked about (and deserving) blog bands of the past couple years, and taking in one of their many sets at SXSW this past spring was like entering a psychedelic cocoon in the midst of a dusty hipster tornado.
Twins Alejandra and Claudia Deheza, also of On!Air!Library!, are every record clerk’s fantasy, all flowing dark hair and fluttering harmonies as delicate as their waiflike frames. Anchoring the sisters’ breathy vocals in a thick, syrupy haze of glimmering dirge is Secret Machines’ guitarist Ben Curtis, who met the Dehezas their bands were both opening for Interpol in 2004. On and off collaborations over the next four years finally culminated with last year’s Alpinisms, a chiming, shimmery walk through an ever-changing electronic rock landscape. Much of the band’s sound is artificial, and live they rely heavily on backing tracks, but the shadowy cloak of Eastern mysticism that envelopes SVIIB seems to shield the band from the usual whiny, stuck up puritan rock criticism.
Make sure you get there on the early side, because SVIIB isn’t the only Brooklynite trio who’ll be sonically inspecting their sneakers tonight. Also on the dance card is The Depreciation Guild, one of the most curiously addictive groups to land in our inbox in long time. We’ve had the chance to check out these Kanine Records fellas on a couple of occasions, most recently on their spring tour with The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. Despite critics’ collective heavy petting of the Pains’ self-titled debut, we though the DG blew their better-known touring mates thoroughly out of the water. Frontman Kurt Feldman (who also plays drums in the Pains, in case you’re wondering) wears his authentic mopeyness on his thrift store sleeve, but the band’s soaring, crushingly ethereal shoegazey rock is a white-knuckle theme park ride through a late-80s England aural wind tunnel. As effortlessly as Feldman and brothers Christoph and Anton Hochheim hold down the hurricane swirling around them, the casual bystander can’t help but wonder if and when the whole things is gonna fly off the tracks. The comparisons aren’t hard to make - MBV, Swervedriver - but the group’s ability to turn a melodic idea from pretty, breezy pop into a gale-force sonic attack is sometimes hard to understand. In the way that makes you wonder how you got lost in your own headphones.
School of Seven Bells and The Depreciation Guild play the Empty Bottle (1035 N. Western) tonight with War Paint and Panda Riot, 9:00 p.m., $12, 21+