One Thousand Killowatts Of Joy

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 8, 2005 5:01PM

Chicagoist just loves a band that includes matching uniforms, manic energy and songs that have a sugary bite snappier than the mintiest Frango chocolate treat. Therefore Chicagoist just loves Peoria’s The Amazing Killowatts, a band that is celebrating their ten year anniversary this summer.

Their sound is a cross between pop-punk, surf and sci-fi freak-out. Don’t worry, that’s sounds a lot more confrontational than it really is. As a matter of fact when Chicagoist played one of their songs for our mom a while back her primary comment was, “Well they sound like a bunch of nice kids.”

Let’s be honest though. Bands that sound like The Amazing kilowatts are not terribly uncommon, now are they? So there must be another reason we’re entranced by these folks, right? The fact of the matter is that while bands like this aren’t exactly in short supply, bands like this that put on a live show that’s part gospel revival and part science project gone wonderfully awry are in short supply. Chicagoist remembers the first time we saw The Amazing Killowatts we were holding our sides and jumping up and down because we were so happy it hurt. How many bands out there get up on stage with the express purpose of making the crowd happy anymore? How many bands out there are just so pleased to be on stage that their enthusiasm proves positively infectious? Chicagoist sees a lot of shows and can say definitively that the answer to those questions is “not many.”

The Amazing Killowatts will spread the joy tomorrow night at Gunther Murphy’s. For some odd reason they’re going on first, which isn’t really fair to the bands that have to follow them, so make sure you get there early.

Photo by Christopher Hickman