Fang Island

Friday, August 27

Imagine putting together the pop savant quality of Broken Social Scene with the inexorable party jams and bro on bro high fiving of Andrew WK. Got it? If you do, you are just beginning to get at the exuberant magic of the Brooklyn via Providence, Rhode Island quintet Fang Island. Vocals? Who really needs them!? Fang Island manages to get the good times done without really having a singer though the occasional “la-la-la” harmony slips in the mix on a song like “Davey Crockett”. Their 2010 self-titled debut on Sargent House Records is loaded with hook-heavy hymns played at high speeds and built for happy high kicking. Fang Island made a recent drop by in Western New York over the summer warming up for the mesmerizing Flaming Lips at Artpark. Their unbridled and energetic live show held it’s own even up against to the eye-popping extremes of the headliner. That’s no small feat! This Friday (August 27) they will bounce, jump, and blissfully rock out with extreme joy on a stage all to themselves... well, almost. Joining Fang Island on stage at Soundlab is Buffalo’s own All Of The Witches, fittingly bringing their uniquely psychedelically twisted post-rock to perfectly fill out the bill.

—donny kutzbach

8pm. Soundlab, 110 Pearl St. (440-5907 / www.bigorbitgallery.org/soundlab)

Friday, August 27

Achilles, Make Do & Mend, All Teeth

Believe it or not Achilles is alive and well and living in Rochester. The upstate New York based screamo band hasn’t been very active lately but they want to assure their fans that they haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. To confirm this, three of the band’s last four Myspace updates are titled “Weekend tour,” “NOT DEAD,” and “Alive!” So what has caused this regionally popular hardcore band to dive deeper underground in the last three years? It probably has something to do with the side-projects turned full-time bands two of the their members are involved in. Drummer Chris Browne has spent most of the last five years concentrating on his Rochester based post-hardcore outfit, Polar Bear Club, who recently played their first stint on the Vans Warped Tour. Meanwhile Achilles vocalist Rory van Grol has spent his time with another upstate New York based hardcore punk band called Soul Control, who, along with the Polar Bear Club, are signed to Massachusetts-based record label Bridge Nine. What this all means is that when Achilles comes to the Mohawk Place on Friday (Aug 27) it could be the last time fans in Buffalo will have a chance to experience their lively live show. Headlining the show (dubbed the “Wicked Summer Hella Tour”) are Colombus, Ohio punk band Make Do and Mend and nothern California hardcore act All Teeth. —cory perla 

8pm. 47 E. Mohawk St. (465-2368 / www.themohawkplace.com). $10 at Ticketmaster, door

Thursday, August 26 & Friday, August 27

Adjoa Skinner

Buffalo-born singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Adjoa Skinner plays two homecoming shows this week, the first tonight (August 26) at the Sportsmen’s Tavern; the second on Friday (tomorrow, August 27) at the Roycroft Inn. The first gig pairs Skinner with her mom, well-known local musician Sue Rozler; the second with her step-father, the equally well-known Joe Rozler. Clearly, Skinner comes from what you’d call a musical family, and her mom and step-dad head the list of her influences. But she also cites Ella Fitzgerald, Nick Drake, Coldplay, Travis, India.Arie, and Zap Mama among those influences, showing just how far her sound can range. Perhaps her most dramatically formative musical experiences came during the years she spent in Ghana, where she adopted the name Adjoa—as well as the djembe and a love for African music. Now residing in L.A., Adjoa looks to be well on the path to success, her talents having led her to share the stage with the Jonas Brothers, Amy Grant, Charlie Peacock, and Daniel Bedingfield—among many others—and recording tracks for movies and TV. This has all the markings of a career that’s about to take off.

Tonight, the mother-daughter duo open for Girls Gone Mild (featuring Sue Rozler, Alison Pipitone, Mary Ramsey, and Theresa Quinn); Friday she’ll be accompanied by the Joe Rozler Trio, with a few surprise guest performers also making appearances. —k. o’day

8/26 6-7:30pm. Sportsmens Tavern, 326 Amherst St. (874-7734 / www.sportsmenstavern.net)

8/27 7:30pm. Roycroft Inn, 40 South Grove St. East Aurora (652-5552 / www.roycroftinn.com)

Friday, August 13

More Than Me

Over the last ten years Buffalo rock band More Than Me has played in virtually every small coffeehouse and major venue in this city. They’ve gone well beyond Buffalo, too. In June the band shared the stage at the London Calling festival with none other than Paul McCartney after winning the Hard Rock Calling Battle of the Bands. This band of four high school friends, who played their first gig at Higher Grounds coffeehouse a decade ago, have officially played every band’s dream gig. They didn’t score the London gig, where they played in front of thousands of new fans, without first paying their dues though. The band has booked their own tours for the last seven years, and with DIY touring comes challenges. “We once played a show in Daytona Beach, Florida at a place called the Seabreeze Lounge,” said guitarist and lead singer Ryan Doyle. “The promoter neglected to tell us we were on the bill with four razor-blade gargling hardcore bands. Needless to say, the room cleared for our set.” The upbeat power-pop quartet will probably feel more at home on the stage of the Tralf on Saturday (Aug 28) where they’ll celebrate their 10 year anniversary and share the stage with Rochester’s Strike the Sky, and the Buffalo boys in Free Henry!. —cory perla

8pm. Tralf Music Hall, 622 Main St. (852-2860 / www.tralfmusichall.com). $12 presale; $14 day of show at Ticketmaster locations

Saturday, August 28

Dan Mangan with The Wood Birds

On “The Indie Queens Are Waiting,” Dan Mangan asks “are we cool now?” Yeah, he’s pretty cool. The Canadian troubadour’s second album, Nice, Nice, Very Nice, perched comfortably at No. 1 on the iTunes Canada Singer-Songwriter charts for a run of six straight months. The track “Robots,” taken from Nice, was honored as the Best Song and Best Song of 2009 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The song’s quirky refrain of “Robots need love too/They want to be loved by you,” worms its way into the psyche for good. Mangan has come a long way from the dude-with-a-guitar gigging at nowhere coffee shops around North America. His songs are deadly catchy, literate, and offer something refreshing to the songwriter form. Some songs stomp through country territory, others are hushed midnight ballads perfect for staring out of windows and dozing off on a bus. Mangan sounds like he’s having a blast on every track, traipsing along with an air of cool, guided along with the help of horns and the humming of female backing vocals. The singer comes from a long line of Canadian artists who have crossed borders with their music, including the likes of Neil Young and Leonard Cohen. Dan Mangan will perform at Mohawk Place this Saturday (August 28) with help from the Wooden Birds (featuring Andrew Kenny from American Analog Set). —peter vullo

10pm. Mohawk Place, 47 E. Mohawk St. (465-2368 / www.themohawkplace.com)

Tuesday, August 31

Buffalo Film Seminars

You know what current TV commercial really makes me insane? The one for some hand-held device that proclaims, “What if you could have cinema quality in the palm of your hand?” Allow me to answer that question: YOU CAN’T!!! “Cinema quality” and “palm of your hand” are mutually exclusive, one being approximately 100 times the size of the other. Buffalo film buffs can continue to rage against the dying of the carbon arc light with the fall edition of the Buffalo Film Seminars, Conceived by UB professors Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian as a way of opening their popular film survey class to the general public, the BFS presents a classic film each Tuesday night at the Market Arcade Theater. After the screening, they lead a discussion with anyone in the audience who cares to join in. The series opens next Tuesday (August 31) with Buster Keaton’s 1923 comedy Our Hospitality, accompanied on electronic piano by Philip Carli. This season’s cinema cornucopia includes some time honored classics (Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning, Bogart in The Maltese Falcon), some more recent gems (Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy, Deepa Mehta’s Water), and some pure fun (I for one never tire of A Fish Called Wanda). The full schedule is at www.buffalofilmseminars.com —m. faust

7pm. Market Arcade Film and Arts Center, 639 Main St./Washington St. (855-3022). $9/adult; $7/students; $6.50/seniors.

Thursday, September 2

Tortoise

Not many bands can say they invented their own genre. Tortoise can. Post-rock didn’t exist before 1994, the year that Tortoise released their first, self titled album. What they’ve created since then are songs, using traditional rock instruments, that transcend rock music. Their guitar strings expel textures and atmospheres rather than hooks and riffs. Their percussion acts as an anchor, but it’s usually impossible to tell just how many hands are actually crashing on each noise-producing drum head as all of the members are multi-instrumentalists. When they perform live there are two dueling drum kits set up facing each other, as percussionist John McEntire (also of the band the Sea and Cake) sits adjacent to musicians John Herndon and Dan Bitney, while they intermittently switch between guitar and drums. Between their massive ambient dream-scape tracks and their driving, jazz based epics the band has a catalog of music as emotionally variant as any classical music composer of the last century and are just as influential. Their latest album, Beacons of Ancestorship is a bit more worldly sounding than their previous five albums, but it still moves at an unrelenting pace. Last time Tortoise came to town they played the Tralf, (and the performance was recorded in it’s entirety for Artvoice TV) but this time it will be a much more personal experience when the band takes the stage of Soundlab next Thursday (Sept 2), with local support from Fourem. —cory perla

9pm. Soundlab, 110 Pearl St. (440-5907 / www.bigorbitgallery.org/soundlab)

Thursday, September 2

Sneak Peak - Next Week: The Black Keys

Wish we could see you there, but those of us without tickets, can’t. One of the most anticipated shows of the summer, the Black Keys date next Thursday (Sept. 2) at the Town Ballroom is, unsurprisingly, sold out. At least, we hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to any devoted fans who were laxing in scarfing up tickets. If so, hate to be theones to break the bad news...

The Black Keys come through Buffalo en route to Indianapolis with tourmates the Whigs. —av

7pm (doors). Town Ballroom, 681 Main St. (852-3900 / www.townballroom.com). SOLD OUT.