Madness on Main 2018 Rundown, Pt. 2: Warlung + Frog Hair + Bernie Pink + Mannequin Mishap + Eroda One + Kyle Hubbard + Second Lovers + Motion Hotel

So, here we find ourselves again, for the second round of our annual rundowns of as many randomly-selected musicians & bands playing at Madness on Main as we can jam into our earholes before the big day (i.e., this Saturday, June 9th) up at White Oak Music Hall and The Raven Tower. See over here if you missed the first go-round…

Before we dive in, though, I wanted to mention a couple of things, both musical and not, related to this year’s MoM.

The first is the Art Market that’ll be situated outside The Raven Tower (I think?), which will have vendors selling all kinds of artwork, crafts, clothing, etc., for you to purchase as you wander from stage to stage. The last couple of festivals I’ve been to didn’t have anything like this, and weirdly, I found myself missing it, missing the chance to just get away from music overload for a little while and check out some art or get some little tchotchke for the kids or wife. So I’m glad to see this happening at this year’s Madness on Main.

Second, there’ll be a Madness on Main “Sneak Peek” show this Friday, June 8th, over at Cactus Music from 5:30-6:30PM. You’ll be able to pick up tickets for the festival at Cactus without paying any added-on fees, which is nice, and you’ll also be able to catch sets by awesome Houston expat Kyle Hubbard, who’s come back down from Arkansas to visit us for this festival, and producer Yvonne Goodwyne, who goes by the stage name Vonne. Both will be damn good, and it’s a cool little intro to the festival.

And third, there’s a real-live schedule now available, over at the right or right over here, so you can figure out where you need to be when. Things kick off around 4PM, it appears, and run til midnight or so (or, I’m guessing, however long UCHé feels like keeping the party going). I’ll add the time/stage info to each of these little writeups going forward, but be warned that things can always change, and yours truly may have no freaking idea…

phew. With that done, here we go:

Warlung
In a nice bit of synchronicity, one of the bands I’m most interested in checking out also happens to be first on today’s list. Warlung is made up of dudes from SCR-favorite bands The Dead Revolt and RIVERS (themselves both alums of Madness on Main/Indeed! Fests past), but it doesn’t really sound much like either of those previous bands.

The new group eschews both the progginess of the former and the post-grunge of the latter in favor of straight-up ’70s-style stoner-/doom-metal, with fill-your-ears walls of crunching guitars, frontman George Baba‘s menacing, almost sing-song crooning, some nicely psychedelic keys, thundering, crashing drums, and lyrics about murder, witches, and big-E Evil. Fans of The Sword, Venomous Maximus, or back-in-the-day Sabbath should sit up and pay serious, serious attention to these guys. I can tell you that I sure as hell will be.
[Warlung plays at 8:15PM at the Deep Eddy Vodka Stage.]

 

Frog Hair
Another “hey, that’s the guy that was in…!” group, Frog Hair combines the awesome musical might of singer/guitarist/songwriter JJ White (ex-Dizzy Pilot/Drillbox Ignition) with guitarist Scott Ayers (ex-Pain Teens/Walking Timebombs), drummer/percussionist PJ Yreugaz (ex-The Lovable Old James), and relatively-new bassist Whitney Andrew (also in Expensive Genes & Jealous Creatures, and who replaced previous bassist Mike Haaga) to form a band that’s basically a buzzing ball of hooky, rough-edged indie-rock/pop awesomeness.

The band’s music rides the line between rootsy rock and pop, with guitars that sometimes jangle, sometimes drift, and sometimes roar, surprisingly complex, quirky song structures, a heavy dose of psychedelia, and White’s reedy yelp all propelling the proceedings into outer space. It’s loud and brash without being heavy, like your favorite pop songs cranked up as loud as they’ll go, and that’s something I can’t help but love.

For some reason, I always find myself thinking of The Flaming Lips, but if that band were a garage-rock band or something; not sure if that makes sense to anybody but me, but there it is. Either way, make sure to see ’em this Saturday.
[Frog Hair plays at 4:30PM at the Deep Eddy Vodka Stage.]

Bernie Pink
The one time I caught Bernie Pink live, it was outside, in a rainstorm, midway through Yes, Indeed! Fest back in 2016. And somehow, that setting worked perfectly, in part because the band just kept playing, smiling the whole damn time, and so the crowd (me included) didn’t mind at all that we were getting steadily soaked.

That said, even having seen them play, I’m still not sure I can accurately describe the band. They’re kind of a punk band, or maybe a post-punk band, with a whole lot of messy noise going on on songs like “Lazer Rabies” (which comes off like The Stooges), some oddly prog-rock/jazz guitar lines (see “My New Face”), bizarro experimentation (see “Fuck It”), and lyrics that sound like they’re aimed squarely at our consumer-obsessed society.

By all rights, I shouldn’t like this; really, I shouldn’t. But dammit, I can’t help it, for some reason — there’s just something about Bernie Pink’s wide-grinning sense of abandon and absolute disregard for anything resembling a rule or genre or whatever else that I’m loving the hell out of.
[Bernie Pink plays at 6PM at the Deep Eddy Vodka Stage.]

Mannequin Mishap
Totally new to these guys, I must admit, although I’ve seen Mannequin Mishap‘s name appear all over the place for a while now. And I will further admit that they do not sound anything like I’d imagined. They’re the best kind of prog-rock, all nimble, twisting bass lines, stutter-stop drums, and vocals that shift between screaming and sweet, melodic singing, and different from pretty much every prog band I’ve ever seen in that there’s not a non-bass guitar in sight. It sounds crazy, and it sure as hell reads crazy on this here digital paper, but damn, it works.

The music is complex but never overly noodly, instead moving and shifting along to keep your attention firmly fixed on what’s going on. There’s a serious influence, to my ears, to The Mars Volta or At the Drive-In, and a squint-and-you’ll-see-it resemblance to both TTNG and fellow H-town band Sunrise and Ammunition. They take all the disparate pieces and pull ’em together into something that’s downright electric, particularly on tracks like “Tea Party With My Taxidermist,” which is pop-song catchy, bang-your-head heavy, and intricate as hell all at once.

Happily, it appears that these guys have gotten some well-deserved attention outside of our Houston; they’re currently on Spirit Vision Records, a label run by Strawberry Girls drummer Ben Rosett and seems to focus on similarly math-y/prog-y bands. Good on ’em…
[Mannequin Mishap plays at 7:30PM at the Deep Eddy Vodka Stage.]

 

Eroda One
Stepping sideways into the EDM realm now, with DJ/producer Eroda One, about whom I’ve heard a shitload of good, good things these past several years, but who I’ve never really had a chance to seriously take a listen to until now. And now that I have…well, I’m enjoying the heck out of his music. It’s way, way more chilled-out than I’d anticipated, less dancefloor bangism and more cooling out at the back of the club towards the end of the night, when you’re content to just watch the lights go around and around.

There’s a bit of a trip-hop feel to some of it, especially on his 2016 EP, Reflex, making me think of Massive Attack’s quieter, more somber moments, and a heavy dose of low-key ambient, to boot. The Reflex stuff is pretty soul-heavy, but newer tracks like “How I Feel RN” and “Karla” are simultaneously more focused on clicky beats and staticky chunks of noise and weirdly organic. It’s like after the end of the party, when the few people left around have all moved outside, into the warm Houston night air, and all the crickets and street noises are merging together to make a new music that’s something all its own.
[Eroda One plays at 9:45PM at the Deep Eddy Vodka Stage.]

Kyle Hubbard
Few pieces of Houston music-related news have hit me as hard as getting the word a few months back that high-flying rapper Kyle Hubbard was leaving the city for the wilds of Little Rock, Arkansas. I know he had to do it for his family, and I absolutely get that, believe me — you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, on that front. But still, damn, man. Hubbard is honestly that rapper I look to and think, “how in the hell are you not selling out stadiums?” He’s that good, I swear to God.

If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is take a quick listen to last year’s jaw-dropping All Good Things Come. It’s a track-to-track hip-hop masterpiece, packed full of the kind of actual songwriting that’s fallen by the wayside in a rap game that seems to be dominated half the time by the likes of Lil Pump, somebody who repeats the same two words over and over again over a couple of beats and thinks that makes a song.

Hubbard, by way of contrast, is sharp and incisive, seeing himself and the world around him clearly and articulates all of that in a way that’s downright beautiful, crafting lyrics that you’ll remember for days and weeks and months afterwards. I see him in the same camp of intensely-personal rappers like Atmosphere and P.O.S. (who, yes, also happen to be two of my favorite rappers), and I fervently believe he could hold his own when set against the vast majority of big-name hip-hop artists out there today. Here’s hoping he doesn’t leave the music behind completely, even as he works to figure out where his life needs to go next.
[Kyle Hubbard plays at 8:45PM at the Community Stage.]

Second Lovers
Man, it’s been too damn long. I’ve seen Americana band Second Lovers a few times over the years, and every single damn time, I find myself clapping and howling along with a giant grin on my face. I don’t know how the hell they do it, but frontman/guitarist Nic Morales and guitarist Thom Truver, the two main guys behind the band, have managed to create some of the most intense, heartfelt, catchy roots-rock you’re ever likely to hear.

They bring in Springsteen and Tom Petty and mash it up together with more recent stuff like Lucero or Band of Horses, and the result is a brilliant ball of rough-edged guitar fire, scuffed-up vocals, and just-country-enough rhythms. It’s truly, truly great stuff, and I can’t even listen to songs like “Hold On” without feeling a warmth creep through my chest. I know the band’s gone through some changes in the last year or two, and I’m actually not sure who’s in the band these days beyond Nic and Thom, but I’m psyched to see ’em on the Madness on Main bill.

Oh, and apparently there’s a new full-length album in the works, the band’s first since Wishers, Dreamers & Liars waaaaaay back in 2012. Holy shit, y’all. They released new single “Corner Store” (which makes me think of The Pogues; never a bad thing) back at the end of last year, and if that’s what the new stuff sounds like, hey, bring it on…
[Second Lovers plays at 5:45PM at the Community Stage.]

 

Motion Hotel
Closing out today’s pile of previews with one I was totally unfamiliar with, relatively-new band Motion Hotel, who I knew not a damn thing about before putting on the headphones this afternoon. And after listening…well, I still didn’t know a whole hell of a lot about the band themselves, but I was becoming solidly impressed with the music they make. It’s warm and friendly and folky but also definitely poppy, with beautifully-layered harmony vocals put front-and-center as the undeniable focus of the songs.

Then my OCD kicked in, along with this weird itch at the back of my brain that something sounded so familiar, like there was a band I’d heard that really reminded me of these folks, and I had to do some more research. And lo and behold, I have heard this band before, albeit in a different form — it seems co-founders Andrew Dethloff and Austin Clark used to go by the name Lion Among Men, a band I saw live on the Pachinko Hut stage at Yes, Indeed! 2014. Wow.

Since that time four years back, Clark and Dethloff have retooled and recreated themselves and have already found some recognition they didn’t get as Lion Among Men, signing a distribution deal with The Orchard for their Broken VCRs EP, released earlier this year. Even with that, though, I’d swear I can feel the bones of the “old” band peeking through; the same smiling, sunshiny vibe is there, the same amped-up folk sensibilities that made me think of Dawes and The Head and the Heart, that’s still there, too. My hat’s off to Dethloff, Clark, and the rest of their new crew for pushing forward and making it work, even if it takes a few tries.
[Motion Hotel plays at 7:15PM at the Community Stage.]

 

Dang. Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. Barring any unforeseen craziness, more to come…

(Photos: Bernie Pink photos/production by Nathan Kiergaard; Kyle Hubbard photo by Michael Villegas; Motion Hotel photo by ParenthesisX Photography.)