popwreckoning

Lollapalooza is an intense experience, but a fun one. Should you manage to find energy after already having spent 12 hours listening to music in downtown Chicago’s Grant Park, then it’d be in your best interest to continue the festivities with official Lollapalooza afterparties.

Thursday after shows include Devo with Dirty Projectors, Slightly Stoopid with Collie Buddz, The New Pornographers with The Dodos, The Big Pink with Night Gallery, and Cymbals Eat Guitars with Young Galaxy.

Friday shows include MGMT, Cut Copy with Dragonette, The Walkmen with Warpaint, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with Freelance Whales, Wild Beasts, and Rogue Wave with Gamble House.

Saturday shows are The National with The Antlers, The Black Keys with the Morning Benders, Minus the Bear with Miniature Tigers, Blitzen Trapper with Avi Buffalo, The Soft Pack with Royal Bangs, Wavves with Harlem, Gogol Bordello, and Precision Guided Musicians featuring Hot Chip (live), Rusko, Steve Porter and more.

Sunday ends with Phoenix with Toro y Moi and HEALTH with Chandeliers.

Tickets for the after shows go onsale Friday, June 25 at 10 a.m. Get them here.

Oakland-based indie rock band Rogue Wave will get back out on the road this summer in support of their latest release, Permalight, on Brushfire Records. The tour includes stops at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and Lollapalooza in Chicago.

Rogue Wave will shoot a video for the new single “Solitary Gun” with director Tyler Manson in their hometown of San Francisco in late May.

The single will go for adds at AAA and ALT radio on May 31, with early adds already in place at WFNX in Boston and KBTZ in San Diego.

Tour Dates:
July 14 – Crystal Bay, Nevada -  Crystal Bay Club Crown Room
July 16 – Salt Lake City, UT – In The Venue
July 17 – Denver, CO – Marquis Theatre
July 20 – Detroit, MI – Magic Stick
July 21 – Pittsburgh, PA – Andy Warhol Museum
July 24 -  Freeport, ME -  Discovery Park
July 26 – Northampton, MA – Iron Horse Music Hall
July 28 – Norfolk, VA – The Norva Theatre
July 29 – Baltimore, MD – The Otto Bar
July 31 – Montauk, NY – Surf Lodge
Aug 3 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
Aug 4 – Columbus, OH – The Basement
Aug 5 – Cincinnati, OH – 20th Century Theatre
Aug 6-8 -  Chicago, IL -  Lollapalooza (performance date TBA)

Pop music has often, especially in recent memory, fought a civil war when it comes to image and authenticity. Think of Poison and Mötley Crüe: glitzy image with seemingly no authenticity. As a reaction to such bands, Nirvana and Soundgarden hit the scene with an unkempt slacker image just oozing with authenticity (real or contrived, depending on your viewpoint). In the 2000s, The Strokes were denounced for their garage band aesthetic but upper class backgrounds while choreographed boy bands filled the airwaves with formulaic songs of love and longing. As we enter the 2010s, danceable music, from MGMT to Ghostland Observatory to Girl Talk and everywhere in between, has become as ubiquitous as ironic moustaches.  All that to say this: it’s always refreshing when a band can be oblivious to what’s trendy and just write good pop songs. Rogue Wave has accomplished just that with their most recent effort, Permalight, which is set for release on March 2.

On Permalight, Rogue Wave manages to find a balance that seems to elude so many bands. Songs like “Stars and Stripes” and the title track are happy without being sugary-sweet, fun without being hokey, catchy without eventually becoming annoying. Of course, pop songs are always more rewarding if there is some substance beneath the toe-tapping surface. Many of the lyrics are hard to pin down, forcing the listener to commit attention and thought to what are otherwise effortlessly enjoyable songs. With the notable exception of “Good Morning (The Future)” – an upbeat tune with heavy synthesizers and electronic drums – the pacing of this album is on an incredibly even keel. Many albums are compared favorably to a roller coaster ride; this album is much more of a Sunday drive with the windows down, cruising familiar roads with good friends. New territory need not be explored when covering old territory is this much fun.

In the liner notes of Ben Folds Five’s album Whatever and Ever Amen, the Folds glibly states that “The lyrics or text were created to detract from the repetition inherent in modern instrumental pop music.” Permalight seems to have taken the opposite path, pushing the vocals out front in every song and making the melodies and lyrics the focal point of each track, so much so that the instrumentation often seems like an afterthought. This point is not meant to deride; in fact, Rogue Wave has the ability to hide their weaknesses (unremarkable guitar work, for instance) under their strengths (infectious melodies and intriguing words).

There is very little (if anything) about Permalight that doesn’t work; the production is slick, but Rogue Wave is not a garage band. There aren’t any shredding guitar solos, instrumental breakdowns, guest star rappers, foreign accents, color-coordinated outfits, interesting facial hair, or 4-track-in-my-grandmother’s-basement production values. Instead, we are given 12 tracks of well-crafted pop music that should not go unrecognized. Of course, a collaboration with Amy Winehouse couldn’t hurt either.

Track Listing:
1. Solitary Gun
2. Good Morning
3. Sleepwalker
4. Stars and Stripes
5. Permalight
6. Fear Itself
7. Right With You
8. We Will Make A Song Destroy
9. I’ll Never Leave You
10. Per Anger
11. You Have Boarded
12. All That Remains