I Sure Could Use Somewhere To Drown

Cafe Nine was already packed by the time I got there at around quarter after 10 last night, which is unusual for a show with just two local bands. Turns out there had already been an earlier jazzbo show, and it was just that everybody hadn't left yet (duh, me). Anyway, Dead Wives went on around 11, and holy shit they actually sounded tight this time, or at least relatively tight compared to the two times I saw 'em at Popeye's Garage. Dead Wives' on-stage presentation is so low-key (hence the name, I guess) that they're never going to blow people away, but they've got such great songs that it almost doesn't matter. Their sound is almost directly Creature Did/'90s Danbury-related, though I'm sure they've heard none of those bands, it's just a coincidence and they're really just ripping off Nirvana/Dinosaur Jr./Madonna/Jesus & Mary Chain... Estrogen Highs played a set of almost all new songs, save for a couple ("Alley Man", "Weed Queen", "I Am Tradition", plus maybe one more) and another cover of "Quality of Armor". Mark and Wes traded instruments for a few songs, including the GBV cover if I remember correctly, which had Stefan requesting that "anyone can just grab the mike and sing along if they want to", but nobody did. That's a Popeye's-only thing, I guess. The new album-- "Irrelevant Future" on Trouble In Mind-- is supposedly being mastered by Mikey Young this very second, and should be a corker, very much along the lines of "Friends & Relatives" with a couple of huffers thrown in. Both of last night's sets were being recorded by the Wicked Squid mobile unit, so there was a huge cable running out the back door to an RV parked outside, with a blanket covering the cable on the sidewalk so that nobody tripped over it. So someone eventually is gonna have a decent live set of Dead Wives and all-new Estrogen Highs songs on their hard drive someday, though I know it's not gonna be me.




Estrogen Highs - For All I Know