Kansas City Blog

Voeks (pronounced "Vakes"), the Australian-born proprietor of Needmore Discs, got his start in the middle of the US alongside the alt-country movement. His first album, Sandbox, was released on the same St. Louis label, Rockville, that got Uncle Tupelo started. Now he's crafting strummy, electric powerpop reminiscent of '90s groups like the Rembrandts and the Gin Blossoms, but with a little more twang.

Apparently, Voeks recently cut his hair, and now from a distance he looks kinda like American Idol judge Simon Cowell. No?

The evening's tightest act was a saxophone quintet. I'm not sure who they were, but their three songs were sprightly, shimmering, fantastically in tune, and difficult to pay attention to after the first number. I'm glad they were there, though.

Up next, Annie Cherry did a burlesque skit that involved a mock game of strip poker with a lean, muscular cowboy guy who ripped off his shirt and pulled his pants down with alacrity when his turn came. Lo, the guy's package was more well displayed than anyone in the audience could have expected, and from that point on, nothing else mattered.

Boing.

If not actually turgid -- and I'm not saying he was -- his choice of underwear did little to chasten his appearance as a roaring member of the male half of the species. Annie did her best to take back the spotlight, flashing her lucky horseshoe bloomers and playing-card-covered breasts, but it was to little avail. The lunchbox had already landed.

Though people rarely like doing anything Bacon Shoe tells them to, at the group's insistence, a small crowd gathered on the floor in front of the stage to hear a nonsensical bedtime story from Lethal D, followed by beats, rhymes, whirling-retarded-dervish dancing and bacon.

Next up: Drakkar Sauna. The Lawrence duo of Wallace Cochran and Jeff Stolz had been sitting at the bar all evening, keeping mostly to themselves. Fixtures of Lawrence venues like the Replay Lounge, these guys looked only slightly more out of place than the person in the donkey costume at the clean and highly functional Crosstown, with its posterless walls, working stage curtains, massive sound booth, tiered seating and late-hours kitchen. As with the Sprint Center up the street, one has to wonder whether such an expensive venue will be able to sustain itself. Local bands aren't going to fill that joint up every weekend. But the sound sure was good all night.

Like buskers from another century plucked from the ether of the past and dropped at the venue of the future just in time to catch up on the day's news, Drakkar sat calmly at its ramshackle station of acoustic guitars, organ, tamborine shoe and drums, peeling out country ballads and singing around a single mic in close-harmony style, with Cochran making several between-song mentions of upcoming NASA space missions, for no apparent reason. Like Capt. Underpants before them, Drakkar Sauna went on a little bit long, but they also brought rustic relief from Crosstown Station's Crosstown Station-ness.

The evening's final act, Abracadabras, took the stage with all the pent-up rocker rage and wooziness that had come from sitting around in a bar for three hours, listening to weirdo hip-hop, old-timey country and monitoring their mascara.

One superlative you can say about Abracadabras is they wear more makeup than any other band in town since maybe Descension. Threads-wise, the band usually looks like it took a collective trip to Boomerang on 39th.They're trying way too hard to stand out and look like some notion of '70s glam rock, but they don't seem to have either the imagination or the funds to do it full-on-Roxy-Music, so they should probably just tone it down all together, or reserve it for special occasions.

Other than the awkward clothing choices, the band really does rock. They've got the chops, the hooks and the overrockin' stage presence. Singer John Nixon sounds like he swallowed Liam Gallagher with a shot of Jameson -- and acts like he's proud of it. Guitarist and sometimes co-frontman Wayne Hutcherson is a rock'n'roll animal. I just wonder how much longer they're going to insist on keeping up the eyeshadow act. Maybe until Aerosmith becomes ironically cool?