Spiral Dub, Dippers, unity, katsy pline

8pm, $12 adv., $15 door, 21+

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Spiral Dub

SPIRAL DUB is a sparkling assemblage of players from RAYS, LIFE STINKS, ALMOND JOY, MANE, DIIV and FUCKWOLF. This is the release show for their debut s/t LP on Sanctuary Moon.

Theirs is a laced party jive, spat in the spiritual tradition of massive-sound Mancunian legends, peppered with acid punk nihilism and bright beams of pop shining through the clouds. Vocalist Chad Kawamura’s poetics are a thing of pure and vile beauty. The band’s pile-on triple guitar approach is hypnotic, bursting with smarts and legitimately groovy. As past-it provocateurs and a force both live and on-record, Spiral Dub are at once a necessary antidote and stark affirmation of San Francisco’s current DIY Rock’N’Roll landscape, a scene where despite all appearances, no one ever actually wins.

“Sugar-spun swarmers and high-octane proto-punk, built on the strength of three guitars and plenty of psychedelic heft. They arrive fully formed, the songs are spiky but hooky, there’s an effortless cool and endlessly warbling distortion. The texture of the record feels in constant motion, the lush psychedelic nature of it becoming the constant thread as they roar between barn-burners and sun-spotted pop.” - Post-Trash

https://spiraldub.bandcamp.com/album/spiral-dub

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DIPPERS

Whether it was fear of the trademark bogeyman emerging from small-hours infomercial hell or it was just time for a change, but the artist(s) formally known as Thigh Master is now Dippers. 

As they put singles and an album or two behind them, most guitar pop groups tend to shed any rough edges, exuberance, energy, propulsion and other associated special elements in the name of "maturity", "increased focus on songwriting" and other concerns that basically translate to a prolonged yawn. Thigh Master was always a strident, more rambunctious proposition, and this is carried over 150% to Dippers. 

Dippers' 2023 full-length, Clastic Rock for Goner Records, doubles down on Ford & crew's supernatural skill at something possessed by only a tiny handful of very special entities that exist under the voluminous banner of indie-jangle/pop: Immediacy. The intervals of ragged, jangly guitar riffs interspersed with waves of sonic mischief pulls from the sounds of stylistic historical royalty such as Television Personalities, pre-bizarro Wedding Present and the scrappier of C86/Rough Trade/Postcard Records quantities, classic Flying Nun (namely The Verlaines, The Bats, The Chills, 3Ds, Look Blue Go Purple) and the 80s/90s groundwork laid by fellow Aussies The Go-Betweens, The Moles, The Cannanes, and the early years of Half-A-Cow Records (Smudge, Sneeze, The Plunderers, etc). 

https://dippers.bandcamp.com/album/clastic-rock

Unity

https://digitalregress.bandcamp.com/album/unity

Katsy Pline

https://katsypline.bandcamp.com/