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Building Better Bombs and The Blind Shake tonight at Memory Lanes

By David Hansen in Upcoming Shows

Monday, Nov. 17 2008 @ 7:00AM

Some people like a loud start to the week. God, the original go-getter, invented light on a Monday, which had to make one hell of a racket. Expect more heat than light on the lanes tonight as Minneapolis’ premier bowling alley/free venue hosts a show loud enough to keep all the weekend’s bad choices cowering in the kennel. It’s a who’s who of our most strident performers, from the cassette nostalgia of garage punkers The Retainers to the messy calculus that is Gay Witch Abortion. They make up the first half of the show, and they traverse plenty of ground, screaming and slamming the doors as they go. To bring off the evening are the Blaha brothers of The Blind Shake, who went so far as to recruit Michael Yonkers in their campaign to leave no eardrum intact on their stand-out release Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons, and Building Better Bombs, long relievers of our robust hardcore bullpen.

To momentarily dislodge tongue from cheek, there’s more than pure decibels bringing these bands together. Retainers’ approach to punk is like Lake Erie afire -- a genre too often still and stagnant goes suddenly up in glorious flames during their songs. Within Gay Witch Abortion’s crowding noise hang structures so elegantly composed, it’s a wonder they stay standing under all that corroded overdrive and cymbal wash. Blind Shake extract primal anxieties from the cerebellum of atonal chords, repeated. And Building Better Bombs, within their spasmodic starts and stops, and their deeply annotated time signatures, manage to be as elemental to their form as a pair of teeth grinding.

Look. However politely you try to tip-toe through it, Monday is going to be a headache. You have the power to decide why. Let’s bowl.