Japandroids/Cloud Nothings, April 22 at the Glass House

It's not often anymore that I discover a band from hearing them around me.  I don't usually get new music from the radio and most print music magazines are dead, so I depend on bands I already know or recommendations from friends.  I heard Cloud Nothings at a party, playing on an iPod.  I immediately dug them and hurried to get Attack on Memory, which is every bit as good as it was that day.  We also saw a bit of them at FYF but it wasn't the full experience.  They were one of the highlights of that year's Coachella but we didn't go, so they were a band to seek out for a local show, and with Japandroids (yet another band I would have missed if not for Carla) that was an easy sell.  I don't know why everyone complains about going out to Pomona, it's not that far.  And there are at least two really great venues there, within a block of each other, with plenty of parking, and one, the Glass House, is one of the best places for punk shows ever.  Just because the place is a bit of a drive is no reason to hate, and it's because of its location that bands can play just outside of L.A. enough that it doesn't violate some kind of proximity clause in their touring contracts, so they can do an L.A. festival, which somehow includes Coachella, then a show here on the way or between weekends.  Both bands came from a place of some minimal but very noisy rock so they fit well with each other, though in different places.  Cloud Nothings might have gotten signed being similar to Nirvana (a grungy, shoe-gaze three-piece; the shaggy, long-haired singer who seems like he'd rather disappear) -- if bands get signed for being similar to Nirvana anymore -- but without easy pop sensibilities and just a heavy, dense barrier of sound that is a lot more welcoming than most bands make it.  Japandroids are more energetic and fun, maybe with some songs that are more accessible, but at its base it's still just two guys making as much noise as possible.  They've been around along that they might have gotten signed for being more similar to the White Stripes than the Black Keys and they might have been fashioned after DFA1979, but that's all only superficial and it's worked well enough that these guys can get in front of bigger crowds.  Both bands said they were at or near the end of their touring cycles, and it was easy to tell that they were exhausted, though their punching through their set, at a quick pace so they could get it over but the speed adding acceleration and not suffering for it.  We were with Andrew, which was appropriate since it was his iPod I originally heard Cloud Nothings on, as well as Heather and Tana, all of them not often venturing to Pomona, especially not on a Monday night, but doing it for a great show, which it was.

Japandroids' set-list:
"Adrenaline Nightshift"
"Fire's Highway"
"Rockers East Vancouver"
"The Nights of Wine and Roses"
"Wet Hair"
"Evil's Sway"
"Younger Us"
"Continuous Thunder"
"Young Hearts Spark Fire"
"The House That Heaven Built" 
"For the Love of Ivy" (The Gun Club cover)