This Weekend: Many Good Bands at Detroit Bar... Plus Carson Daly People

By Spencer Kornhaber Fri., Mar. 26 2010 at 9:40 AM

Categories: this weekend

Timothy Norris

The Morning Benders reinterpreting The Hangover

If you're not at Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa for at least one of the next three nights then, well, we just don't know what.

A bold claim, but here's the evidence...

Tonight: Tobacco. That's the name for the solo side-project of Tom Fec, mastermind for Black Moth Super Rainbow. Last May, the Weekly described BMSR as "a hippie tribe on their own Spahn Ranch, like fellow cult rockers Indian Jewelry, only trading in their fuzzy guitars for fuzzier synthesizers." Can't go wrong with fuzzy synths. Check Tobacco's Boards of Canada-indebted "Backwoods Altar" below, which would remind you of a haunted house--a chillaxed one--even if the video wasn't portraying a haunted house.

Opener the Hood Internet, two mash-up DJs with a taste for breeding indie rock with top-40 hip hop, should be fun as well. Just this past Monday, we published an interview with them in which they described their creative process as throwing pasta against a wall. So... show up hungry?

Saturday: The Morning Benders, a.k.a. Indie It Band of 2K10 Q2. The Berkeley act just released their sophomore album Big Echo to wide acclaim. The hype's pretty right; Big Echo's got sturdy songs and a lush, harmony-heavy sound. For some reason, their song "Excuses" (lovely live video below) always reminds me of a big, red lollipop...

No mention of candied goods in the Weekly's feature that ran when Morning Benders came through town in early 2009. There is, however, this diagnosis of their songs: "The swagger and whimsy of prime '60s rock and pop is enmeshed in the immaculate tunefulness and free-flowing wordiness of '70s songwriters, topped with some crunchy American indie and snotty Brit-pop influences."

Sunday: Surfer Blood, a.k.a. Indie It Band of 2K10 Q1. Breezy yet somehow bombastic, the Florida group puts out fuzzy, beach-kegger anthems that have caught a lot of tastemakers' attentions. Like, uh, Carson Daly. According to Detroit Bar's Jon Reiser, a crew from Last Call With Carson Daly will be in the venue on Sunday night, filming Surfer Blood. Just think: You could be shown on some of the least-watched TV... on TV.