CALENDAR

DOORS @ 7:30 / SHOWS @ 8PM, UNLESS POSTED OTHERWISE 

• Fri

  11

  Oct

  2019

  Very Good, Alena Spanger & Wish Wish 10/11

  7:30 Doors $10.00 Suggested Donation

   

   

  Very Good is an 10 piece theatrical Chamber-rock ensemble, performing the songs and ideas of vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Sean Cronin. Equally influenced by Leonard Cohen, Bjork, Shostakovich, Duke Ellington, and Eugene Ionesco, the band slips between different styles while maintaining its own evocative and timeless sound.  October 11th is the digital release show for Very Good’s highly anticipated new album: Adulthood.  In celebration,  the band promises to put on a show unlike any other. The band’s leader and mastermind, Sean Cronin, has never been satisfied just putting on a regular “rock show”, and over the years his work with Very Good has developed an entire universe, unique to itself in its theatricality, spontaneity, and dadaist aesthetic. At a Very Good show, the audience’s perception of performance is constantly challenged… you may find the music coming from behind you, the band conspiring to ridicule the leader, and always a healthy dose of nonsense, played by clarinets, multiple drums, violin, tuba, guitars, and multiple vocalists. For this particular performance, Cronin has recruited actors from the experimental theater group Caborca to depict absurdist scenes between songs, as well as dance company Konverdgdans to physically represent some of the emotionally complex messages of Cronin’s songwriting. The performance of the band, itself, is in constant metamorphosis, sometimes a small folk band, sometimes an ever expansive orchestra. “Adulthood” will prove to be a journey to somewhere far far from where we began

   

  Alena Spanger is a singer/pianist/songwriter from the balsam forests of Maine, now based in Brooklyn. Weaving together angular art-pop songcraft, unorthodox vocalizations, and intricate arrangements that turn from baroque complexity to visceral immediacy on a dime, Spanger’s songs construct their own elaborate and immersive worlds. With her previous band—Tiny Hazard, and in her new music, Spanger explores the less familiar nooks and crannies of timbre and of psyche. As Dusted Magazine noted, “Spanger sings to provoke, not to comfort.”

   

  This duo incarnation of WishWish puts their existing songs against a whole new, pared down backdrop, and explores new material written specifically with this collaboration in mind.  Rachel Housle and Sean Cronin ride the line between the familiar and the abstract, retooling the simplicity of catchy melodies for their own, slightly-warped, ends.  Drawing upon the outsider folk of Michael Hurley, the familiar, yet uneven phrases of Elyse Weinberg, and the bouncy, dissonant softs and louds of the Pixies, this duo questions what makes a folk song while challenging classic songwriting conventions to a headstand contest.