THE LEGACY OF BILL GRAHAM
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Weekend

Sample this concert
  1. 1Welcome to Daytrotter00:05
  2. 2Untitled06:07
  3. 3Veil08:29
  4. 4Youth Haunts05:05
Weekend Jun 25, 2010
Liner Notes

The name that comes associated with the Weekend band e-mail account is one Ian Curtis and when you receive a message from them, you have to remind yourself not to respond to someone coincidentally named after the late Joy Division singer, but to the actual people in the three-piece, San Franciscan group. Shaun Durkan, Kevin Johnson and Taylor Valentino are doing something much sunnier than what Curtis did in his short time making music, but they've applied that brightness with a dark energy nonetheless - an energy that Curtis would have showed appreciation for, without expression -- for an interesting effect, making the group one of the more expressive and interesting of the smattering of chillwave, lo-fi bands out there making music and putting it out on the Internets and on limited quantity pressings of vinyl, every chance they get. It's as if they've settled on being capable of hugeness that rivals any skyscraper - creating a cascading free fall that sounds like the exhilarated or scared shitless utterances of someone who's just wantonly flung themselves off of the top floor of one. There are drawn out howls and enough propulsive chugging and thumping in the rhythm section that the sound could easily be mistaken for the thrashings and pleadings of an actual human heart. Where the muscle references come to an end is when the slipping and searing, distorted flailings of guitar kick in and we're left to navigate this jagged feeling without any ropes and it feels all that much more threatening. Weekend - despite the very photogenic and jealousy-inducing, wish-you-were-there scenic spot photograph of a side-of-the-road park on the edge of a cliff being crowded out by a powerful sun - should be the theme music, the very hardened, black jeans and leather jacket-wearing theme music for a motorcycle gang. Not necessarily the Hell's Angels, but a gang less bent on violence and more interested in just haunting dreams or something a little more enjoyable.