The WOW Hall will host KWVA’s Betterfest this weekend, featuring an arsenal of music ranging from the face-melting stoner-rock of FUZZ to the chilled-out indie outfit Ducktails. All shows are free for UO students.
Thursday: FUZZ
According to KWVA music director Thor Slaughter, “FUZZ is the loudest live band of all time.” Little else is known about this proto-metal side-project other than that it is the rad creation of multifaceted San Francisco native Ty Segall.
What little material has been released by FUZZ reveals that the band lives up to their name. Segall and company produce intense, psyched-out ’70s stoner-rock likened to the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Black Sabbath.
FUZZ features Segall on vocals and drums, as well as lifelong pals Roland Cosio on bass and Charlie Moonheart on guitar. FUZZ will kick off the first night of KWVA’s Betterfest alongside Colleen Green and You Me & Us this Thursday, May 16.
Friday: Ducktails
Ducktails is the side project of Matthew Mondanile, a member of New Jersey based indie-rock outfit, Real Estate. Mondanile produces a sound which could best be described as one lingering between a recent Wes Anderson soundtrack and a Polaroid picture taken somewhere in southeast Portland. It’s the type of music that suggests introspective nostalgia and yet, does so in a way that never comes across as pretentious or frustratingly hipster.
Ducktails is easy-going, yet exploratory, composed of Mondanile’s close friends and colleagues, as well as a number of other artists — from the backing of popular east coast band Big Troubles to contributions from Daniel Lopatin (Oneohtrix Point Never), Madeline Follin (Cults) and Noah Lennox (Panda Bear).
You can catch Ducktails at the WOW Hall on Friday, May 17 alongside The Beets, The Memories and White Fang.
Saturday: Naomi Punk
It’s unfortunate that “post-grunge” is used to describe bands like Creed and Linkin Park, who commercialized grunge’s foreboding obscurity in the early 2000s; because now, contemporary bands like Naomi Punk, who take the style’s basic tenets and send it in a far more interesting direction, are sometimes associated within the same genre. While Naomi Punk uses the genre’s basic elements, their songs aren’t even remotely comparable to the cheaply synthetic recreations of Puddle of Mudd or Staind.
The Washington state trio’s response to grunge signifies that the genre has not been destroyed by your dad’s favorite 2000s band.
The trio will play alongside Weed, Cascadia and The Helio Sequence for the final night of Betterfest on Saturday, May 18.