Goat Of Arms at Weirdo Records

I had no idea Goat Of Arms had such a following. When I went to Weirdo to see Steve Norton, there were only 6 people in the whole room. Last night when Goat Of Arms played it was the exact opposite. There must've been 20 to 30 bodies squished into this tiny closet sized record store along with a whole drum kit. It was very, um, intimate.

The band brought a large tray of chocolates that they handed out to the audience (which seemed to consist mostly of everyone who knew everyone else). There were also some Tofutti Cuties being passed around (peanut butter ftw!). Somebody brought their dog. It was more like a party or cookout with friends than a proper "concert." And that just made it all the more pleasant.

So Goat Of Arms are a girl/girl accordion/drum duo. Imagine an accordion accompanied to some percussion. That's pretty much what Goat Of Arms sounds like. It's nothing surprising or out of the ordinary. Not to dis their music or anything. They're fucking great. They play wonderfully charming minimal, slightly foreign sounding tunes that I haven't heard from the likes of anyone else (partially because they're the only accordion/drum duo I know of). It was entirely acoustic (anything else would've been madness) with most of the drums and cymbals having some sort of padding to soften the blow. The drummer would occasionally sing in Spanish, doing the whole aye-aye-aye yelping thing. It sounded like it had been a while since they last played live, with the sporadic slip-up in timing & synchronization and the periodical mis-starts but that all added to the semi-uncouth magic of the evening.

One of the highlights was halfway through their set, some kid walking by on the sidewalk shimmying his way through the front door to sneak one of the chocolates left right by the doorway. I don't know who he belonged to or how the hell he knew there was free chocolate inside. Everyone who noticed looked at each other completely baffled and incredulous. We silently laughed as the band continued playing, either not noticing or not caring. 'Twas a great night that you should've missed only if you went to Gay Gardens to see Animal Hospital et all.

Aaaand I picked up a copy of Dead Machines Plays Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. FUCK YEAH. Should have a review of that (plus all the backstock of vinyl I got piling up) once I get my stylus in the mail.