E is for Eggshellent at O’Brien’s Pub on Sunday, 9 July 2023.

Dyr Faser and Bitter Wish sandwich the triple-stack bill.

Poll: Should students receive grades?

There’s always discourse simmering on whether or not standardized tests produce good educational outcomes.

The Yes camp says we need a standard metric to measure student progress and teaching effectiveness across a wide range of learning environments.

The No camp says the tests are used to punish rather than promote learning and may be slanted to reward students in certain racial and socioeconomic categories.

There’s more to the Yes and No than that, but that’s basically it.

Some No campers go even further and argue that all grades in schools should be abolished. What’s to replace them? If they need replacing, you can use something like written evaluations to offer qualitative rather than quantitative assessments.

You can mull that over or you can learn why there’s no E in the old skool A, B, C, D, and F grading system.

Dyr Faser

When we last caught Dyr Faser it was in the backroom at Silhouette Lounge.

The twin Flying V attack returned to the stage at O’Brien’s Pub this time. And there’s a light show!

Dyr Faser delivered a kind of ranging, roving guitar exploration that kind of brushes against open form Neu highway rock, but slower and slushier, and the band reels in the sound into more recognizable pop structures.

It’s medium tempo garage psych with lyrics used more for rock n roll sloganeering than storytelling. Shades of Guv’ner. Couldn’t always tell whether they were using altered tunings or just out of tune, but it worked in a kind of Destroy All Monsters way.

E

There was a band called D+ on K Records back in the day. E is not quite as good as D+, but they’re better than F+.

It was the band’s first show in about a year. More prolific than cicadas. They’ve got a new 7” on the way…

The three-piece includes Thalia Zedek on guitar and vocals; Jason Sidney Sanford on guitar, vocals, and devices; and Ernie Kim on drums, percussion, and vocals.

The ‘devices’ part really grabs your attention in the live show. Sanford has a homemade rig that would make the Unabomber blush. Very mad scientist chic. A Frankenstein soundboard, an Ironman guitar, and a slew of MacGyver pedals. He flipped through a notepad between each song to remind himself which plug goes where to get the next sound he needed.

Gavin McCarthy from Crystal Lizard joined the bunch on stage for a quick ditty.

Bitter Wish

You can only use the descriptor ‘epic’ once per show. Bitter Wish wins the ‘epic’ prize for playing a one-song set.

And it wasn’t one of those phony one-song sets where everyone in the band is having a smoke while one guy stays on stage noodling an open E string. It was a real deal playthrough jam of about twenty minutes. Or more? Time bends in weird shapes when forever songs start messing with your internal sense of spacing and pacing.

The Philadelphia-based three-piece crafts slow to medium tempo sludge power psych. Lots of pedals. Most importantly, a gong.

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