Sat 11/30 @ 9PM
Three outstanding Cleveland bands you may not know share a bill at the Happy Dog this weekend.
It’s not surprising you don’t know Likenesses. The group played its first show this past summer.
But if you’ve been around the music scene you know the members. Alex Tapie, Craig Ramsey, Matthew Gengler, and Tony Cavallario have been around in other projects.
This one makes the sort of instantly engaging, pulsating pop music you feel like you’ve known all your life. When they played at Patsfest at Pat’s in the Flats this past summer — their first gig — one acquaintance of mine dubbed them his “new favorite band.”
Library Time has been a new favorite band of mine since I first heard them last year.
Fronted by the brother/sister team of guitarist Adam and keyboardist Miriam Zegarac, the band cherry picks influences all the geekiest ’70s and ’80s new wave bands — Devo, Talking Heads, Wire, the B-52s — and manages to make them sound more contemporary than retro.
They have a history too. Adam & Miriam were two-thirds of Thee TV Oh Dees who won the 2008 High School Rock Off when Adam was 18 and Miriam was a mere 15.
The final band on the bill, the Pleasure Leftists, are a crisp, dynamic quartet with an urgent, ricocheting late ’70s/early ’80s British post-punk twang. Petite vocalist Haley Morris has a tough, wailing Chrissie Hynde-meets-Siouxie Sioux warble. The group released a five-song vinyl EP in October.
Admission is $5, $1.66 apiece for some of the best bands kicking around Cleveland.
www.facebook.com/Pleasure-Leftists/
Photo of Library Time by Anastasia Pantsios