Space for rent

Tonight marks the return of old-school thrash metal and shred-guitar legends Testament, who will give you whiplash along with Unearth and Lazarus A.D. at Metropolis. If you aren’t really a shredhead, a better bet would the Ukulele Bizarro Festival at Il Motore, hosted by the woman previously known as Lederhosen Lucil, Krista Muir. It also features Meb, Risa Dickens and others out to prove that the instrument is much more than just Don Ho and Tiny Tim. For a shearing no wave racket, you can check out Many Mental Mistakes with Edmonton’s Famines, Thin Lizzy tribute band and perma-potheads Ultrathin and Phil Console at the Squalor house. If you miss MMM tonight, you can also check them out Saturday night at la Brique with the debut of Pink Noise.

Friday night, the roots music of the Unsettlers gets washed down with gallons of whiskey and an opening shot of Brie Nelson at the Green Room. If you want to satiate the quirky nerd that lies inside, you have to check out the funky, Devo-esque electro groove of the World Provider when they return from their Euro tour to Divan Orange.

Although already mentioned a couple of pages previous here in the Mirror (see p.18), the Figgs deserve a second notice as these power-poppers are as good as they’ve ever been and continue to be one of the best live bar bands of the past couple of decades. Catch them Saturday night at the Green Room with local likeminded rockers Dead Messenger and the Jimmy Riggers. For you shitkickers out there, sound the butt trumpets for the return of the Southern-fried Nashville twang of the Sonny Best Band at l’Escogriffe.

Finally, on Wednesday, it’s a hard choice when the scurvy-ridden pirate rock of Death Boat docks at Café Campus with Montreal’s busiest band, Barn Burner, and the always-awesome Bloodshot Bill, while the riff-o-rama rawk of le Nombre sets fire to Divan Orange.

If you need any recharging, there are a couple of DVDs hitting the shelves this week that you should plug into. First up is a documentary on the current line-up of the Sun Ra Arkestra, Points on a Space Age, directed by Ephraim Asili. This is for true fanatics only as the doc is marred by questionable sound and with the exclusion of interview footage with current musical director Marshall Allen, this hour-long film gets a bit thin. If you are just getting into the interstellar jazz of Sun Ra, best check out the amazing 1974 film Space is the Place, directed by John Coney, or the 1980 doc A Joyful Noise, directed by Robert Mugge.

More impressive is the Despised Icon’s live concert/documentary, Montreal Assault. These local tech-metalists can deliver blast beats with the best of ‘em but it’s their monster breakdowns that really put them in a league of their own. Amazing 5.1 sound, multiple camera angles and a bonus disc tracing the band’s history as well as the nerve-wracking lead-up to the DVD shoot at the sold-out Club Soda show last year.

SPACE IS STILL THE PLACE…JONATHAN.CUMMINS@GMAIL.COM