Dead Heavens Played Wonder Bar with Ba Babes and The Muscadettes

Dead Heavens' Walter Schreifels

What Fight?

Scotch LaRock is a big Walter Schreifels fan. He even has a personal email address reflecting his admiration for one of Schreifels's bands. Scotch had to work on Saturday night, so I made sure I'd get over to Wonder Bar to document the show by Walter Schreifels's latest project, Dead Heavens.

The show listing only ever mentioned Ba Babes and Dead Heavens; but when I got into Wonder Bar, another band, fronted by tall twin sisters, were setting up. They turned out to be The Muscadettes from Montreal, and they were an excellent surprise. Female-fronted, reverb-drenched garage rock in the style of Dum Dum Girls. I picked up their Side A EP on the way out and have been playing it ever since.

Ba Babes followed The Muscadettes. They did their typical set of straight-up dirty garage rock, and things were sounding especially good at Wonder Bar that night. I've seen the band several times over the last year. They have fun. The crowd has a blast, and this was one of their best-sounding sets.

Dead Heavens -- made up of Drew Thomas (Youth Of Today), Paul Kostabi (White Zombie), and Nathan Aguilar (Cults) in addition to Schreifels -- took the stage as "Only Shallow" by My Bloody Valentine was blasting through the speakers. It was a bit of foreshadowing as the sounds produced by Dead Heavens owe something to both the blues-based psychedelia of the 1960s and the crushingly loud mbv walls of noise.

The sounds of Dead Heavens blasted through the venue, and I could feel my ears rattling even through my earplugs. It wasn't all noise and jams, though. The songs had hooks, and Schreifels's voice was clear above the squall. The combination of garage rock and shoegaze fit quite nicely into a couple of the genres I really enjoy.

The whole thing was put on by Arcade Radio and cost just $6. That's 6 bucks to discover two great bands that I'll definitely be listening to going forward and to see another band that I enjoy even more each time I catch their set. Not bad. A way better deal than paying $89.95 to watch two guys split half a billion dollars.

Anyway...

Here are some photo highlights. Check out the rest up at Flickr.