FRI JUNE 5 - BROTHER JT (thrill jockey), GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC, TYLER TRAVIS (of WV WHITE)

FRI JUNE 5 @ TREE BAR. 887 CHAMBERS RD COLUMBUS OH BROTHER JT The Brother JT saga (proper) begins in the early '90s. The Brother had been doing a bunch of solo recording that he felt were outside the scope of the Sins. One night he ended up on a Siltbreeze tour that alighted at the rural homestead of bald, music fatty, Byron Coley. Chemicals were in the air, and when JT played him some tapes, the results were released as the first Brother JT album, Descent,on Wayne Rogers and Kate Biggars' Twisted Village label. This led to an array of other JT projects, many of which paralleled the Sins' trajectory, until he decided to pursue the Brother JT psych-path more exclusively. Results appeared on such labels as Drunken Fish, Siltbreeze and Drag City, and man, they were great. Now he has made his debut on Thrill Jockey, and it is, perhaps, his most outstanding effort yet. The Svelteness of Boogietude is a typical of JT's output in certain ways -- rockers mixed with ballads, all of them crafted with causal elegance -- but there are new elements here as well. In particular, there's an attention to the legacy of later-period T. Rex, which results in tunes that kick total ass. Mr Coley, having seen Bolan play during his Zinc Alloy/Zip Gun Boogie period, went so far as to claim that “JT's approach to this stuff equals that of the Master -- huge riff-based anthems that balance glam dynamics with mystical history on the head of a pin. “ But JT also manages to pull of ballads that can remind one of Beat Happening (“Gliding”) or what it might be like to hear Warren Zevon covering the Velvets (“Somebody Down There”), a lost track by the Stalk Forrest Group (“Muffintop”) or even a Kevin Ayers/Scott Walker move so bold you'll shiver (“I Still Like Cassettes”). It's inconceivable that anyone who truly digs rock music will not be sucked deeply into the vortex of Boogietude. We can only pray that you will hear it, to experience the massive wonders of he who is Brother JT. From his remote headquarters in Central PA, the Brother has let another massive arrow fly. Don't not get in its way. w/ GOLDEN DEATH MUSIC Ephemera Blues, the new album from Golden Death Music, is not as self-serious as both the album and the band’s title suggests. However, it’s close. This is spaced-out and psychedelic, but it doesn’t channel the past so much as brood in the face of the future. When it works, it is a big orchestra of sadness. “Together” is fatalistic but still yearning—“Together we can finally be apart,” sings Michael Ramey—and the guitar riff up-front in the mix sounds fragile and quiet. But off in the background of the track, another guitar squeals away, always growling behind the piano keys and soft acoustics, making Ramey’s singing merely the tip of a dangerous iceberg. Ramey himself can sometimes channel Jandek in his ghostly vocals. Sometimes that channeling comes through echo effects, but more often it’s in his desire to sing for emotion rather than for key. His willingness to let his voice warble and break is his biggest strength. And while some of these songs have too much space for their own good, and let themselves unravel, the best of this stuff is as carefully-constructed and well-executed as any space-pop floating around out there. TYLER TRAVIS WV WHITE frontman plays a solo set.. $6 21+ 10 PM