Tag Archives: high dive

Restless and Reckless Powerpop Sad Bastard Jams To Help Get Through The Winter – High Dive (Bloomington, IN), Away Game (GR), Brown Cow – 2.21 – Milhouse

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If you’re sick of being sad in the winter and just wish you could feel the sort of antsy malaise of the summer instead, the Milhouse basement has just what you’re looking for! Powerpop, pop punk, bummer summer, and other sorts of sadpop summertime jams will be happening, so come over and forget the several feet of snow and the inevitable last few cars you will push out of a ditch before it’s over. 

HIGH DIVE are a band out of Bloomington, Indiana whose musicians are associated with other wonderful and varied bands such as Defiance, Ohio, Good Luck, Toby Foster, Pink Houses, Community Currency and plenty more that I’m guaranteed to not even be aware of. They play pop punk with ferocity and an unparalleled sincerity. Music filled with self-reflection and queer positivity, it’s just the sort of themes best expressed in a medium you can scream along and dance to. 

Here’s a couple of songs from their performance at The Fest in Gainsville, FL:

 

AWAY GAME from Grand Rapids are bringing their version of lo-fi basement pop to Kalamazoo for the first time. Friends and former collaborator of modern powerpop heartthrob Sam Cook-Parrot of Radiator Hospital, you know these folks have the know how to make the music that makes you bob your head while feeling decidedly slightly despondent.

Finally, BROWN COW of local notoriety / infamy / will be making their first appearance at Milhouse. Mallory and the dudes bring sad slacker folk rock to a whole new level. This band has been showcasing their work around Kalamazoo for a couple of years, and I feel like I messed up by only recently checking out their music – don’t make the same mistake I did! Though their recordings are from a bit of time ago, rumor has it there’s new songs in the work that may make an appearance.

Show starts at 9:00! Please bring money to donate, as gas is never cheap when you’re lugging a fender rhodes or any other gear. Please respect everyone and everything around you, I feel they’ll do so in kind to you.

If you need the address email ditkalamazoo@gmail.com

Packed High-Energy Summertime Show at Milhouse 6.16

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Milhouse has taken a risk and booked three touring bands on three different tours. The reason: because all these bands are going to kick.

Signals Midwest are a high-energy midwest hardcore band from Cleveland. Their album Latitudes and Longitudes is infectious, and presents an intensity that promises to translate well to the live show.

http://signalsmidwest.bandcamp.com/

High Dive are a posi queercore pop punk band returning to Milhouse, bringing a new EP with them. Comprised of Plan-It-X records artists Toby Foster and Ryan Woods, They are packed with thought filled lyrics in a loud and fast package.

http://highdivetheband.bandcamp.com/

Sleepyhead are making their Kalamazoo debut, traveling all the way from Minnesota, bringing tappy hardcore emo to round out the evening with them.

http://sleepyheadpunx.bandcamp.com

Local support includes Jake Simmons & The Little Ghosts  – Americana fused with pop punk featuring Kalamazoo’s best front man, and Tim Tapper opening up the night with songwriting that is both political and emotional, coupled with solid guitar playing.

Show is starting at 9:00 PM on the dot. PLEASE DONATE TO THE TOURING BANDS. Three outta towners all need gas. There will be hand-printed 11X17s of the flyer available to purchase when you donate. Respect the house, respect the bands, respect yourself, skate or not.

As usual if you don’t know the address, email DIT.

12/11: When A Lumberjack Falls In The Woods–High Dive, Our Lady, George Costanza, and Witchfingers @ Milhouse

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When carousing on a Tuesday night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, some stroller-abouts might have trouble finding something “relatable.” More so if if they happen to be a straight, white, male.

You get weird looks in the bars, surrounded by hordes of glassy-eyes ogling your Levi’s and plaid, and all the restaurants have funny names for the drinks like “Rainbow Hobgobbler,” or “Jackie Gleeson’s Log Cabin Party.”  By golly it even seems like the way I wear the bristly spider hairs on my face becomes subject to public criticism; especially on Tuesdays.

It happens everyday. Taking over the music scene, too. Gays, lesbians, transexuals, transgender, all the Alphabet Soup Party members burst out the perfectly matched shutters, periwinkle closets, and checkerboarded picnic tables of the Vine Street Neighborhood, screaming and hollering indecipherable rants on “acceptance,” “tolerance,” “community,” and “identity” into the atmosphere, inevitably linking up to the hive minded stage over at the 411 Club also known as Metro.

Spinning off of these choruses and chasms is what can be considered “queer-core,”  what show-booker and house-venue operator Rory Svekric describes as a genre that askews “ ‘heteronormatively’ written” songs “that need to be fudged a little to be relatable.” They may or may not contain members of the overwhelming  majority that is the LGBTQA as well. That’s why she booked the Bloomington, Indiana queer-core pop-punk trio High Dive for her show tomorrow at Milhouse–and maybe for lead singer Toby Foster’s playful lisp, or the quick bursts of energy that surround their two-and-half minutes diddys about isolation, love, and suicide as angst ridden teens and twenty-somethings. Kissing boys is a major theme as well.

Who can possibly find themselves in these songs?

High Dive will be playing alongside the ever-changing power-pop-punk group Our Lady from Springfield, IL, and home-grown emo-indie acts Witch Fingers and George Costanza, the second of which may quite possibly be the most emo band name I’ve ever heard. Both of the home town groups share a spastic spittle ridden silliness in their sound, that in some way shape or form may be appealing those gruff young kids that have the same spastic spittle ridden silliness called angst.

Tomorrow night, Milhouse. 8:30 p.m. Donations for the touring bands would be more than tolerated.

Respect the house, respect the bands, respect the perspectives.

If anyone has comments, questions, or concerns, it is encouraged that they comment below, or email the writer at espontaneo.clark@gmail.com