BANDS ON TOUR
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London punk is aflame right now. Alongside favorites like Chubby & the Gang, the Chisel, Big Cheese and many more, the city’s latest export is High Vis, a hybrid of Oi! punk, alternative, and hardcore approached with the tuned songwriting ear of many of the aforementioned as well as Oasis, Cock Sparrer, Buzzcocks and others. Their first U.S. tour was nothing short of an unequivocal success, selling out across the board and earning rave reviews everywhere they went. Remember when Turnstile came through the U.S. and you skipped them and the next time they played was in an indoor stadium? Catch High Vis ASAP, you’ve been warned, FRED
HIGH VIS
LE TIGRE
Le Tigre are back! And not a moment too soon! I know they wrote “Deceptacon” about the lack of meaning in popular rock, but I suspect they also wrote it to soundtrack cruising around with the windows down every summer. The whole thing feels very celebratory in that Kathleen Hanna has finally emerged on the other side of a harrowing battle with Lyme disease—in this case, a win for Hanna becomes a win for us all, cuz we really just wanna disco, MANDY
LOVE AND ROCKETS
Bauhaus are great and all, but goddamn are we stoked to see the return of Love and Rockets! Featuring the entirety of Bauhaus except for the moody vocals of Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets went on a straighter alternative-leaning path, clearing the way for the band to explore all sorts of previously untouchable regions like soul, pop, psych, and more. The results were similar to some of the greats of the day: the icy cool of the Jesus and Mary Chain, the raucous fun of Primal Scream, and the spacey pop leanings of Echo & the Bunnymen. Catch them before Peter Murphy decides to do Bauhaus again and you’re stuck waiting for the end of a lesser band. Yeah, we said it. FRED
Still sounding fast, evil, and enjoyably sleazy on their 20th anniversary, it’s always cool to see Midnight on a headlining tour (there are some festival dates included in the E.U.) versus doing support for humongo metal bands. Weirdly, I find Midnight to be a good “summer pick,” since it’s like all the fun elements of black metal, speed metal, and punk (with a tiny dash of BOC riffage lately?). This is guaranteed to rock, GRACE
QUANTUM CRIMINAL BOOK TOUR
Books can go on tour too!
Remember Steely Dan? Remember books? If you remember either (okay...only if you remember both), have we got a tour for you! In support of Quantum Criminals: Ramblers, Wild Gamblers, and Other Sole Survivors From the Songs of Steely Dan, a book of essays and artwork devoted to individual songs by the meanest and slickest band in rock ’n’ roll history, writer Alex Pappademas and painter Joan LeMay will be slinking through the languid back alleys of the nation’s surviving bookstores. Considering Pappademas is one of the most amusing and incisive scribes in the game, and LeMay has both visual flair and grace to burn— not to mention a level of boho alt street cred most of us would kill for—this tour will rock harder than nearly any other this summer. Even though it’s for a book, ZACHARY
