COLOR TONGUE TRIPS OUT AT BROOKLYN BAZAAR

Greenpoint Brooklyn’s land-marked Polish party club that is now the Brooklyn Bazaar once again threw a rager of show with four remarkable up-and-coming bands rocking well into the late night hours.

Color Tongue

Night Spins was up first up and instantly set the bar to a brilliantly high-intensity level from the outset. They are musical vagabonds that gathered from various cities in the sunny South to produce an energetic blend of reckless rock and frenzied showmanship here in the Big Apple. They blend garage rock and classic Southern rock with blaring guitars with booming rhythms pureed with a flair for the theatrical. Josh Brocki proved to be a bombastically expressive frontman that propelled the set with frenzied showmanship and a charismatic flair for dramatic performance as he acted like a ringmaster to a wildly diverse circus of musical mayhem.

Night Spins

Chicago’s dynamic duo North by North kicked out a booming performance as they graced Brooklyn once again with their slick style of blaring rock n’ roll. These two gypsies of shocking and shaking are drummer Kendra Blank and guitarist/singer Nate Girard, and together they beam off the stage with rockin’ righteousness. Their songs are short and straight to the point, but they make the journey feel like the head trips you always wanted to take, making raw and gritty garage rock that grips you with warm catchy pop hooks that’ll catch you and hold tight as it swings you around with reckless abandon. Their Last Days of Magic double disc album from a couple years back is still one of my favorite listens, and their new material sounds even better than I could have hoped.

North By North

The local power trio of Warpark continued to set the stage ablaze with a groovy balance of punk and progressive that proved a perfect pill to keep the night going strong. They were all formerly in a local band called Lounge Act, but they are certainly not a chill-out jazz fusion outfit you’d see with your visiting parents. Bassist Roger Walsh stands out as a dynamic and mesmerizing fiend on stage with lots of classic punk power and prowess, guitarist and singer Simon Arcenio has the talent of classic rock axe god, and drummer Nick Ciccantelli has the dynamic abilities of a progressive rhythm pioneer. They are trifecta of strange ingredients that do keep your head-banging while you wonder what’s going be flying at you next.

Warpark

Brooklyn’s own lunatic asylum known as Color Tongue headlined, and they brought a whole new level of understanding of what musical diversity can be. They alternate between sound influences you can decipher like Animal Collective, LCD Soundsystem, Tame Impala, The Rapture, Man Man, Dan Deacon, and Spaceface and then into zones that are almost so abstract they defy explanation. Synth and bass player Eddie Kuspiel let it all out as a master mad man, as he blasted out powers of a thousand stars on stage. Guitarist and singer George Miata proved to be the glue holding this interstellar party bus together while keeping the energy at supernova levels. Multi-instrumentalist Ray McGale killed it on the feverish keyboards. Drummer Ciccantelli from Warpark joined in and after only two practices sounded like a real veteran starship trooper. They just released a new EP of psych-pop excellence called Bealing Bells, and have shown real growth as a band from the last time I saw them a couple years back. I can’t wait to see what worlds they’ll take me to next.