BIRTHDAY SUITS
BIRTHDAY SUITS
"We're Birthday Suits, not 'The' Birthday Suits"
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Since their debut in 2005, the Minneapolis-based duo of Matthew Kazama and Hideo Takahashi has excelled at tossing elements of late-‘90s mathcore and classic Reagan-era punk against the wall with disarming power and impressively fresh results. Their latest release, The Minnesota: Mouth To Mouth (Nice and Neat Records), sticks to that formula, but with a smidge more spit-polish shining up their succinct sense of melody. The Birthday Suits’ biggest asset remains the way their blurry-but-brilliant mix of sharp edges and curvy hooks matches up neatly with their dark-humored lyrics and stage presence that feels as gleeful as it does dangerous. Fans of Future of the Left and No Means No will not be disappointed. [Hannah Levin, Seattle Weekly]
STRUT & SHOCK
Formed in the heat of summer '07, Strut & Shock has been rocking ever since. The sound is a little surf, a little pop punk, and a little goth lobster.
Does it Strut? Does it Shock? Hell yes.
The band has chops, cutting its teeth in projects around the Twin Cities: Arzu (Selby Tigers), Christina (Bleeding Hickeys), Beth (Spider Fighter) and Jack (The Deaf).
If you want to know—who is Strut and who is Shock?—save it.
We'll never tell.
LEISURE BIRDS
Crawling out from the primordial muck of rhythm and reverb, Leisure Birds concoct a hallucinatory brew of squealing keyboards, thumping floor-toms, stabbing guitars, chant-like vocals and sinuous basslines. Hailing from Minneapolis, Leisure Birds sound like a lost artifact of the first psychedelic era; the British Invasion meeting swamp boogie along the muddy banks of the Mississippi.
