Posts Tagged ‘house of blues’

Five-sixths of Theory of Flight with The Fist. Photo by Michael Gaskell / MG Studio

My assault on the local music scene continued last week with a Las Vegas Weekly article about up-and-coming sextet Theory of Flight, whose Dishwalla-meets-30 Second to Mars sound is propelling the band to the next level.

We met for an interview in the green room at the House of Blues before a local music showcase featuring Theory of Flight. The guys were super-accomodating, very honest, earnest and passionate about their music and continued to reinforce just how great most of our local bands can be. In the last month or so, I’ve interviewed a number of groups — all male-dominated, sorry to say, which might be a topic for a future article — and surprisingly, there hasn’t been a douchebag among them. For the most part, these guys get along fabulously, work harder than they play and actually support other bands. I’ve been looking for some drama, but honestly, it’s hard to come by.

I’m optioning a few local acts to profile next for the Weekly, but I’ll be taking a brief detour for my next assignment; however, I’m not telling you about it until the story’s done. I know, I’m such a tease. In the meantime, you have been keeping up with The Utopian webcomic, right? Shit’s about to get heavy.

Geoff Rickly and Tim Payne taste the chaos

For the most part, my musical tastes haven’t fluctuated much since high school. I tend to lean toward classic rock, ’90s alternative and anything either from or inspired by the New Romantic scene: The Doors, Soundgarden, The Cure, Morrissey, Depeche Mode. When I glom onto new bands, they tend to be derivatives of those groups (She Wants Revenge, Bloc Party, Editors, etc.).

None of which explains Thursday.

Oh, sure, lead singer Geoff Rickly’s voice has been compared to a young Robert Smith, but that’s a limited, and mostly inaccurate, comparison.  Otherwise, the post-hardcore band from New Brunswick, N.J. — which I’ve written about numerous times — comes from an unfamiliar scene  during a time in which I was pretty out of touch with anything new and stuck in my ways. I think it was during a trip to Hot Topic in 2001 (right before aging out of that demographic) that I picked up the band’s Victory Records debut, Full Collapse, on a whim (it was a featured album, and the “Robert Smith singing in a hardcore band” tag must have actually worked on me).

From that moment, it was on. Back then, I didn’t have a car, so I spent a lot of time on public transportation with only my portable CD player (and notebooks, of course) to keep me company. And I wore the hell out of Full Collapse. Skull-penetrating melodies. Breakneck drumming. Dissonant guitars coming from all directions. And Rickly going from whine to scream to whisper — and sometimes speech — all the time delivering some of the best-written, most insightful lyrics I’ve ever heard. (more…)