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The Elephant 6 collective hits town, plus I Am the World Trade Center and more
BY CARLY CARIOLI
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The Volunteers (Jade Tree), the new album from Jonah Matranga’s Onelinedrawing, comes with a fan-boy testimonial from emo yelper Geoff Rickly, who laments that the ex-Far frontman is not as popular as certain of his imitators. "Confessional singer-songwriters with punk-rock backgrounds are all the rage now," Rickly wryly notes. We’re in agreement on this much: Matranga’s emo-folk homilies, lo-fi rock screeds, and chamber-pop ballads are preferable to Chris Carrabba’s, but will Volunteers turn him into MTV’s new unplugged playboy? Not if he can help it: "All these punk-rock pimps and ho’s/Sellin’ this and sellin’ those/I mean what’s the dilly, yo?" Jonah sings dolefully. "If that’s what passes these days for livin’ large/Then I’m happy livin’ small." Onelinedrawing play Tuesday at Axis (617-262-2437) in Boston. Meanwhile, Rickly’s Thursday are living large with a gig at the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Sunday, topping a bill with Atlantic screamo kids Poison the Well plus Engine Down and Spitafield. And dark-hued pop punks My Chemical Romance — whose Rickly-produced I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love (Eyeball) has landed them a deal with Warner Bros. — are upstairs at the Palladium on Friday with hot-topic emo-thrash overlords Avenged Sevenfold (also recently signed to Warners). A pair of Elephant 6 bands turn over new leaves on their latest outings. Having schooled themselves in an odd assortment of classics — Misfits, Bad Brains, Tall Dwarfs, Hüsker Dü — on 2002’s Nothing’s Going To Happen, Elf Power have ditched psychedelia in favor of a refined, straightforward pop on Walking with the Beggar Boys (Orange Twin). While hinting at the neo-classicist rock of Saturday Looks Good to Me and Neutral Milk Hotel, the Elfin ones display a glam-folk vibe that harks back to prime-era T. Rex. They’re at the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Wednesday. Meanwhile, their buddies Of Montreal have just released Satanic Panic in the Attic (Polyvinyl), an alliterative fantasia on which their appreciation for Sgt. Pepper psych-pop zaniness is tinted with shades of more recent vintages: Stevie Wonder’s ’70s boogaloo and a pinch of ’80s electrobeat. They’re at the Plan, at Great Scott (617-734-4502) in Brighton, on Saturday and the Space (207-828-5600) in Portland on Sunday. Like Of Montreal, Dan Gellar & Amy Dykes’s duo I Am the World Trade Center previously recorded for Kindercore, an indie label that dissolved in a tabloidish legal struggle. Gellar was a co-owner of Kindercore, and he must be among the few musicians ever to be dropped from his own label. Worse, he and Dykes ended their romantic affiliation, and their forthcoming The Cover Up (due in June on Gammon) addresses both meltdowns while marking their passage from twee indietronica to full-fledged synth-pop and electro-disco. IATWTC are at the Smith College Fieldhouse (413-584-2700) in Northampton on Monday, the Space on Tuesday, and the Brookline Community Center (617-738-2800) in Brookline on Wednesday.
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