The Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground didn't have a lot in common, but one thing they did share was a later-discarded name both of them used in their early incarnations: the Warlocks. For the Los Angeles band that finally stuck with that name past the planning stages, it wouldn't be too out of order to suggest that they found another way to link those two groups and go a ways beyond. Since their 2000 self-titled debut EP they've worked the middle ground between spaced-out Captain Trips psychedelic noodling and Warholian art-damaged darkness, sprawling out into late '80s/early '90s shoegaze turf, and overall wringing all they can out of their doped-up-sounding fuzz-gloom neo-psych. Their latest release, The Mirror Explodes, might be their gloomiest release to date, though that doesn't guarantee a bummer so much as it sets the stage for a hazy evening of distortion-heavy reveries. With the Morning After Girls, Gliss.
Wed., Aug. 5, 8 p.m., 2009