Title Fight/Pianos Become the Teeth @ The Magic Stick, 10/27/12

I have been neglecting this blog pretty hard the past two months, and I have a lot of things to post about before I'm ready to even figure out let alone share my year-end music list. So, here I go to try and power through all of this shiz as quickly as possibly. If the writing is shottier than normal, I do apologize.

The weekend before Halloween, on a whim, my girlfriend and I decided to hit up the Magic Stick Lounge for a Title Fight/Pianos Become the Teeth show. We missed the two openers, Single Mothers and Face Reality.

Pianos Become the Teeth (terrible band name), who call the popular and impressive Topshelf Records home, were just about what I expected: true screamo/melodic hardcore with post-rock flourishes. Totally good at what they do (tight, put on a good show), and though I have recently discovered other bands in this genre that I actually do like (brings me back to high school, blah blah blah), PBtT just were not my thing.

Now, Title Fight just ruled. Bravender tipped me off to them a couple of years ago, and I was pretty into last year's album, Shed. But, this year they released Floral Green, which is a complete masterpiece (more on that in a couple of posts). This tour obviously was to promote that album, and thusly, they played mostly Floral Green songs. They did treat the crowd to two choice Shed cuts, the title track and "27," which fuse pop punk and modern hardcore wonderfully. As I'll get to further down the road, Floral Green is a whole other monster, bringing in elements of emo (or, more of it), "space rock" (ala Hum), and pure rock 'n' roll. The highlights of their set were surely "Leaf," "Secret Society," and "Sympathy," all of which are more on that pop punk/hardcore side of things. "Head in the Ceiling Fan," which perhaps is their song that sounds most like Hum, was a nice treat too. These dudes look super young, but talent-wise are one of the more mature punk bands around, and that really came through in their performance: unhinged energy, yet tight as all hell. If you like punk rock and you get the chance, see them.