REVIEW: GOOD VIBRATIONS FESTIVAL 2016 FAVS: Loteria, Nalgadas, Pleasers

Wow!! Its been a long, long time (about a year and a half) since my last review.  However, I recently returned from a long cross-country tour with two bands and nothing gets your rock n' roll batteries charged like driving all over the country and playing/partying with a bunch of blue ribbon, low class rock n' roll shitheads.  There are at least 20 bands I can think of off the top of my head that I met in my travels that deserve a review.  In this post I'm gonna focus on three bands that I heard at GOOD VIBRATIONS FEST in Austin, TX last month.

A little background on GOOD VIBRATIONS...This two day festival, put on by Austin's #1 rock n' roll rascal Ben Tipton (BURGER CITY ROCK N' ROLL), is in its third year and features some of the finest leather-clad musical delinquents from all over the country.  While headliners NOBUNNY, Mean Jeans and Reigning Sound would've given anyone a good reason to pack up and head to Austin the festival also featured a butt-load of other rad established and upcoming acts.  Well-known or not, nearly every band played something that sounded like glam, old metal, proto punk, power pop, country rock or all the above.  Good Vibrations Fest is for the people who pine for the days when denim, feathered hair and flairs were high-fashion, KISS still frightened worried midwestern parents, synthesizers weighed a shit ton and vans came off the assembly line with shag carpeting already installed.

One of bands that caught my eye was Loteria from Austin.  Their unpretentious, straight forward, "econo-jam" riff-rocking made me say "yeah this is what I want to listen to right now" (lemme just say that I'm pretty sure that was right after my first toot and way before my first bowl so I was ready to ride the lighting)...Its music that would sound even better if you were driving a 1974 AMC sports car down a desert highway in west Texas while you listened to it.  At times they sounded like hairy, suede-leather'd, southern rockers, at other times great american troubadours and still others three-chord garage punks.  In all honesty, they sounded the way my yankee brain believes a band from Texas ought to sound like and the drummer's cowboy hat and Texas flag rodeo shirt only reinforced this vague notion .  Their 2014 LP, Party Favors, gives you a pretty good idea of what they're about.  Can't wait to hear the new one.  Get it here.

While I had met two of their members, Leo and Pato, the week before while on the road in El Paso at The Monach, I hadn't actually heard Nalgadas until they took the stage on the first day of the fest at The Barracuda.  Nalgadas make guttural music for the maladjusted troglodyte that lurks in all of us.  Angular riffs swoop in, disorient you and push you back on your heals as the rhythm section delivers blow after blow until you finally fall backwards into your shallow, filthy rock n' roll grave.  Their music punishes as it pleases and then leaves you standing in front of a smoldering stage.  Just check out this track off their 2014 LP QUIUBO.  Get it here.

Matthew Melton's (Bare Wires, Warm Soda) new project, Pleasers, is pretty rad.  Fans of glam staples like Milk N' Cookies or Nick Gilder will be pleased with is unashamed nod to the form in Melton's signature style.  Filled out by aforementioned Tipton on bass and Julian Young on drums these three lover boys play rock n' roll like they've been living in a roller-rink biosphere for the last 40 years.  Fortunately they've emerged to serve us an unhealthy dose of saccharine teenage rebellion from a dangling, denim-upholstered coke spoon.  Dig in to their latest piping hot, self-titled digital single here.