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That's what happens with us midwesterners -- we bitch and bitch about our four-month winters then as soon as the temperature rises above 70 and it gets a bit humid, we start doing this number: ask "is it hot in here to you?"; wipe prodigious sweat from forehead, wipe on pants; begin to take off jacket; pass out. Dropsonic had no excuse as they're from Atlanta, but they're also rock demons and probably sweat and wail while spreading mayonnaise on bread.

Anyway, it was a very well attended show, especially for a Wednesday night at Davey's. Openers Quatre Tete from Chicago didn't get to enjoy it much as they played to a mostly empty concert room. For smoking ordinance reasons (I suppose) there's no smoking in the concert room at Davey's, but you can smoke in the bar. So most of the people there early enough to hear QT's riff-heavy, intricate, mildly aggressive rock were smoking and drinking in the bar, watching a Charles Bronson film with the sound off and going, "man, it's hot -- are you hot?" Actually, I should note that Davey's has installed a big flatscreen in the bar with a closed-circut feed from the stage, which is pretty sweet.

About Quatre Tete, go go go to their myspace and listen to the track named "larry." It's a phone message apparently left by a rambling drunk who wants to sign the band and make them famous. he says some amazing things, like "necessity is the mother of invention and it's creeping close to being real," and "you may be fartin' through silk for the rest of your life." Then, if you want, listen to the songs.

Fronted by a singer and lead guitarist who looks kind of like a cross between Rivers Cuomo and Ben Folds, Dropsonic is way more badass than anyone realizes. Snarling like a pissed-off Thom Yorke, Dan Dixon leads his power trio through swamps of progressive, punky, bluesy riff rock that melds the Jesus Lizard and Zeppelin and is not afraid to take solos.

I feel kinda bad for bands like Dropsonic and headliner the Life and Times. Before the show, I spoke to a friend who's been around the scene a while and, like many, remembers the post-hardcore '90s of Shiner and Season to Risk and Southern Records and probably feels a bit fatigued by it, over it, whatever. When I told him Dropsonic was opening for TLAT, he had them confused with Traindodge, another band that came up in that scene and is still working a similar hard, musically complex, anti-melodic form of rock mostly preferred by dudes. St. Louis' Riddle of Steel also probably knows what I'm talking about. It doesn't help when, say, Dan Dixon, makes a joking reference to The Egg in his stage banter. And it certainly doesn't help that all these bands still dress like SHIT. I know, I know, the road and all, but seriously, guys, take your girlfriends shopping with you. Something.

So, Dropsonic: righteous and furious. The crowd was still standing for The Life and Times, and they remained so throughout the show. Look, I have proof!

(Gotta love the Random Guy Who Looks at the Camera, in this case, he's wearing a plaid shirt. Perfect. I wish he was in all my photos.)

After setting up their trademark waist-level stage lighting, the trio launched into its blissed-out, hard-edged-psychedelic rockadalia, with singer-guitarist Allen Epley cooking up auditory heroin with his effects-laden vocals and Telecaster.

(The baseball hat hanging from the microphone stand: not so much.)

I think Andrew Miller described the group's sound best in this 2006 entry:

"Allen Epley's ax spits feedback fuzz, surges, and vanishes like quick-passing highway traffic, and then reverses its melodic flow as if someone started spinning the record backward to scan for Satanic messages. Chris Metcalf's drums hiss and rattle during the verses, then detonate in conjunction with Eric Albert's baleful basslines during pulsing wall-of-sound climaxes."

Think about that while listening to "Ave Maria" off TLAT's latest EP, The Magician.

MP3: The Life and Times, "Ave Maria"

The boys are going on tour this summer and plan to release a new album in September.