Results tagged “Damaged Patients” from Live Like This

There's one more big round of announcements for Big Ears, including some performers who had already been part of the official schedule released a few weeks ago and also including a number of local performers.

At the top of the list is Shelley Hirsch, an avant-garde singer (she uses what's called "extended vocal techniques) who'll be performing with Chattanooga's Shaking Ray Levis. They'll be on the same program with Tim Hecker and Ben Frost on Sunday afternoon.

Asheville math rock band Ahleuchatistas will play on Saturday and Sunday, and Baltimore's Videohippos are performing with Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez and Knoxville synth-pop duo Damaged Patients. Other Knoxville bands just added to the line-up are Argentinum Astrum, Mountains of Moss, Shortwave Society, and Warband.

The updated schedule is available here.

Synth-pop bands Cold Cave and Nite Jewel got stuck in the snow in Washington, D.C., on Saturday and couldn't make it into Knoxville for their scheduled show at Pilot Light. Never mind, though--local duo Damaged Patients more than filled in the headlining spot with their public debut.





Damaged Patients--the enigmatic Jennifer Toland on vocals, Ben Tramer on drums, and a preset synth--performed a short 20-minute set of nearly a dozen very brief songs that channeled both Joy Division and classic 4AD bands like the Cocteau Twins. Toland sang in a flattened but not quite emotionless voice over melancholy synth lines while Tramer banged a steady, heavy martial beat with mallets on a tom/snare/cymbal set-up and two separate video screens showed a close-up of Toland's mouth as she sang and a wide-open human eyeball.

A sizable crowd had come to the show, presumably to see Cold Cave and Nite Jewel--one group had, in fact, driven up from Florida to see them--but got way more than their money's worth from Damaged Patients. (Never mind that there was no cover.)

Cold Cave, the noisy Philadelphia electro-pop band that's gone totally '80s on their new album Love Comes Close, have just released a new video for the song "Life Magazine." The band, featuring members and ex-members of Xiu Xiu, Prurient, and American Nightmare, is playing at Pilot Light on Saturday, Feb. 6, with Nite Jewel and locals Damaged Patients. 

Cold Cave "Life Magazine" from Focus Creeps on Vimeo.

Up-and-coming indie dance-pop stars Cold Cave and Nite Jewel are coming to Pilot Light next weekend. They're playing with the similarly minded local duo Damaged Patients on Saturday, Feb. 6.

Cold Cave's full-length debut, Love Comes Close, was released last year, then reissued by Matador. The three-piece band from Philadelphia is led by Wesley Eisold and includes Caralee McElroy, formerly of Xiu Xiu, and Dominick Fernow of Prurient.





photo by Jayme Thornton

Mp3: Cold Cave, "Laurels of Erotomania" from Love Comes Close (Matador, 2009)