Rock 'n' roll is such an ephemeral concept. There are thousands of bands classified under that umbrella. And thousands of bands playing some kind of permutation of "rock." But there are a select few bands that don't need any kind of classification beyond, simply, "rock." Brothers are one of those bands.
Though they look like a renegade offshoot of Hell's Angels, Brothers don't aspire to deal meth or pillage your town. (Well, maybe they aspire to pillage your town musically, but they seem like nice guys.) No, they're just here to rock. And rock they do, bringing some of the most heavy, swaggering throwback rock to the table you've ever heard. Take, for example, "Real Long Way to Go," from Brothers Vol. 1. The first words you hear are "Woah oh-oh oh oh," which is always a good indication of rock-readiness. Then comes the brutally distorted guitar, followed shortly by harmonica, and pedal steel. By the time Billy Sorrentino's whiskey-soaked howl cuts through the mix, you should be experiencing visions of motorcyles and women.
The Living Kills traffic in a less swaggering, but no less excellent form of rock. If Brothers are like Steppenwolf and The Rolling Stones, The Living Kills are perhaps more like The velvet Underground — a buzzing, clamoring wreck of noise with sweetly straightforward melodies soaring overhead. Enjoy the howl of "Angels Without Faces."
Opening the evening are Brooklyn's The Sundelles, whose sound skews a bit poppier, but no quieter. "Noise-pop" gets thrown around a lot, and it doesn't really mean anything, but the Sundelles fit that tag as much as anyone. It's loud, noisey garage rock, but with melodies that will remain stuck in your... melody-craw, we guess, for quite some time.
Frankly, we love it when venues throw together a bill that makes sense, and Knitting Factory knocked it out of the park on this one: If you like one of these bands, you will probably like the other two, and that's what makes for a great show.
The Knitting Factory is located at 361 Metropolitan Avenue in Brooklyn. It's $10 to get in, and the show starts at 8 p.m. tomorrow, the 28.
