A lot of the outdoor bashes & block parties had weirdly similar lineups this summer (the Alarmists, whom I love, were once playing again Saturday afternoon at the Concrete & Grass Fest in St. Paul and are at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Block Party next weekend), so the second annual Ruckus on the West Bank at the Nomad Pub caught my eye Saturday. Except for a few familiar names, including the Melismatics and Big Quarters, the two-stage indoor/outdoor fest featured a lot of newcomers.

Maybe the best of them was Poison Control Center, whichis big down inits native Iowa but are just breaking in here, after signing to local label Afternoon Records to issue the new CD, “Glory Us.” The quartet of early 20-somethings (in the crappy photo attached) headlined the outdoor portion of the event with Nirvana-like energy/scruffiness and a fuzzy guitar-pop sound a la the Comas and Silversun Pickups.

Inside, I caught two other promising newcomers: North, a moody, arty, organ- and piano-laden quartet wearing near-matching ties and vests. With echoes of Editors and Radiohead, the band’s prettybut powerful music was a bit too downbeat for a music event called the Ruckus. In fact, its most uptempo number was a cover of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” But it’s definitely a band to watch.

For opposite reasons, the same goes for the 757s, a band whose members will never be mistaken for rock stars –just the nephew and brother ofrock stars, thanks to guitarist Seth Zimmerman and bassist Paul Pirner, respectively–but they went for broke anyway. As in broken ear drums. The band also features Jimmy Peterson (Bellwether, Missing Numbers) and another vet on drums, Steve Sutherland. They all sing. Soundman Ryan Olcott had to twice ask them to turn their guitars down, they were overpowering the Nomad’s system with their boozy, “Tim”-era-Replacements-meets-”Bee”-era-GBV sound. Quite humorously, they cleared the bar of a lot of the cutely dressed, babyfaced indie-rockers, which I took as a good sign.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 9th, 2007 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Local, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.