Rudyard's British Pub

Holder (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/HolderTX

 

 

Brand New Hearts (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/BrandNewHearts

 

“One was a quartet of guys from the teeny little town of Magnolia who called themselves Ultramagg. They were one of the best damn emo(-ish) bands this city had seen, in my humble opinion, and they played every show like they were destroying the stage at some arena-sized show in front of a jam-packed crowd of crazed fans. They were heavy, they were melodic, and they were awesome. Frontman/guitaristNathan Parsons wrote the kind of songs I wished I could’ve written, and it killed me when they stepped out of the limelight and put down the guitars and drumsticks.

Then there was Ben Murphy, who fronted or played with a slew of bands back in those days, from Pop Deflation to We’ve Got Airplanesand up through Panic in Detroit and Lucky Motors and beyond (and who most recently worked his magic in the sadly-defunct Bright Men of Learning). I can vividly remember watching Ben play guitar at one We’ve Got Airplanes show and feeling my jaw literally drop as I tried to figure how he was making the sounds that were coming out of the speaker.

Back in those early band days, we — like every band in this town — had trouble finding and keeping a drummer. We auditioned a ton of ‘em, honestly, and one of the few that utterly bowled me over was a guy named Jeff Senske. The man played like a hard-hitting metronome and was one of the best, tightest drummers I’ve heard before or since, up there with Sugar’s Malcolm Travis or Superchunk’s Jon Wurster. (Plus, he makes the best Drummer Faces ever.) Luckily for him, he came to his senses and demurred when we asked him to join the band, but we went on to be in damn near every good band that came after, including Trompedo and the aforementioned Bright Men of Learning.

Last but not least, there was Bring Back The Guns, aka Groceries, aka Gandhi in Evags, aka at least three or four more names I can’t recall. At one point, I’d pinned my hopes on BTTG to be The Band, the one who’d finally make the Music World At Large sit up and pay attention. The band’s skewed-yet-addictive brand of indie-rock was fun as hell but weird enough to make you scratch your head; in a lot of ways, looking back, they were about five years ahead of their time. And after releasing an EP, an album, and a couple of 7″s, they called it quits and went their separate ways, leaving myself and a bunch of other devoted fans sad and disappointed.

I say all this, by the way, both to set the stage somewhat and explain why I was so freaking excited to get word of the existence of Brand New Hearts a month or so back. I’d heard from Nathan Parsons back in the fall, when he nonchalantly mentioned he was trying to get a band together, and a couple of months later, BNH appeared, a band that boasted Parsons, Murphy, Senske, and Ryan Hull of Bring Back The Guns. It was damn-near perfect, at least on paper.

And, happily, from the snippets I’ve been able to hear so far, it’s damn-near perfect in reality, as well. The band comes off like the best elements of all the component bands/musicians, all mashed together into a glorious, rough-edged, insanely catchy whole, and I can’t wait to see ‘em live.” – Space City Rock

 

Slow Future [formerly Strange Weapons] (Houston, TX)
https://www.facebook.com/slowfuture

 

 

 

 

$5, doors 8:30pm, show 9:30pm, 21+