Remember when you were in high school and Ft. Reno was your life? Our new intern Andrew is still living that dream. He’ll be giving us some coverage and taking shitty pics with his point and shoot throughout the summer, thanx Andrew!

Power Pirate

This band gets major points for being very young and for the most part very tight as a band. I heard the singer is graduating 2011. From Highschool. OK, so these kids are young, but they definitely had some solid tunes. The music was reminiscent of Ra Ra Rasputin, with four on the floor drums and sawtooth synth licks galore. I was diggin the female singer’s stage presence and was only mildly peeved by the attempted cover of “Sandstorm” that ended anti-climatically with a laptop malfunction.

It’s nice to see a young band that actually knows what they are doing, and with time and practice these guys will be hitting the club scene hard in no time. In fact, check em out at the Black Cat this Wednesday.

Sea Monsters

The middle band, Sea Monsters, lived up to the “middle spot” with poppy songs that grew in to straight up rockers more often than not. Think Bellman Barker or Let’s French with a little more attention to the Pavement style guitar solo. Yeah that was a mouthful, three references in one sentence, I know. But seriously, these guys can kick out some mad decent jams. I especially liked the bassist, she really brought the funk. And props to lead man, Blake Courlang, for leading such a well orchestrated outfit.

Go Home Robot

By far the highlight of the evening, this group of older (said with respect rather than derision of course) types put on a very, very entertaining set. It’s rare and pleasant to see a good band you’ve never heard of, GHR was present on both counts. I liked the mixture of 80s era DC independent rock with a danceable (the one thing missing from most of that last reference) edge. And boy did the crowd get dancing. Which was a little weird because I wouldn’t call this band’s music “dance” by any measure, definitely closer to alt punk if anything. Isn’t this second or third time ppl have been dancing en masse at these shows?? Crazy. Oh and had they had a robot that gave out stickers and sold CDs. Pretty genius, huh? CHECK THIS BAND OUT NOW!