✔️= Critic's Pick
✔️ Dead Boys Don’t call it a resurrection, but Dead Boys is back in town this Thursday. The Ohio rock band were Sire and Bomp! Records darlings who influenced countless young punks including the late Anthony Bourdain, who once described the Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” as something close to immaculate. “It’s got the perfect sound, perfect lyrics, it’s about longing and rage and envy and a desire for revenge. It’s absolutely what rock and roll should be about — in a perfect world,” Bourdain said on the Turned Out A Punk podcast. That song, according to surviving Dead Boys member Cheetah Chrome, took just 10 minutes to write, but his band’s Bay area appearance comes in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Dead Boys' landmark debut album Young, Loud and Snotty. Sure, we’ll all miss lead vocalist Stiv Bators — who died in 1990 — but Chrome has been playing these songs for the last decade now. (Brass Mug, Tampa) INFO
Amanda Watkins Single Release & Florida Party Amanda Watkins calls Nashville home these days, but once upon a time the songwriter made her bed in Tampa Bay. She comes come for this beachside gig and will have a brand new, sunny single, “Little I Got,” to share with friends, family and fans who don’t mind making the trip out to Treasure Island. (Ka’Tiki, Treasure Island) INFO
✔️ Datenight w/Fever Beam/MTVH1N1 Life’s alright when you’re young and in a band that gets compared to The Clean and The Replacements. That’s how it’s going for Nashville-based outfit Datenight, which drops into Mojo for a Thursday-night show where the fast and loud songs from the band’s February 2018 release, appropriately titled Comin Atcha’ 100MPH, will clang-a-lang off the shelves and stacks of vinyl at the university area shop and DIY spot. Drummer Thomas Borelli, bassistIsaac Talbot and guitarist Grayton Green used to play a more hardcore, Stooge-ish style of rawk, but 100 MPH added some jangle, melody and handfuls of screaming solos to great effect. This Tampa show — part of a 16-date tour of the Southeast — doesn’t feature Laundromat (a new band featuring members of Golden Coastal Grizzlies and Story Mode which played with Datenight in Lakeland), but it does include an appearance from much buzzed-about St. Pete newbie Fever Beam, which boasts members of The Spuds, Plastic Pinks and Crystallized in its lineup. (Mojo Books & Records, Tampa) INFO
PRESS PAUSE
Listen to Unbuilding, the new album from Orlando indie-pop group The Pauses
✔️ The Pauses Album Release w/J. Robbins/Pohgoh The Pauses are a long-running Bay area favorite whose affair with the area goes back further than the days when the Orlando indie-pop band played shows with some of our neighborhood’s favorite acts (read: Sleepy Vikings and Candy Bars). Clocking in at just over half-an-hour long, the group's new album Unbuilding boasts nine tracks in which songs like “Don’t Wake Me Up” and “Eventually, Everything Connects” wear the crunchy keyboard punch of early Pauses albums like 2011’s Robbins-produced A Cautionary Tale or a 2012 split with Chicago pop band Great Deceivers. The record, The Pauses' first in seven years, also delves into a more seasoned sound that may be the result of member Tierney Tough’s work with Matt Pond PA and Beach Slang over the last few years. Take “Had/Have” or “The Best for the Most for the Least,” which are platantative, playful and buoyed by the lyrics of a seasoned songwriter dropping emotive introspection almost effortlessly into deceptively simple arrangements from multi-instrumentalist Jason Kupfer and drummer Nathan Chase. Robbins (who’s played in bands like Gov’t Issue and Jawbox) opens this show along with old-school Tampa band Pohgoh — which releases its own comeback album in the fall. (Crowbar, Ybor City) INFO
ALSO PLAYING
Johnnyswim, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, Penny & Sparrow (House of Blues, Orlando) INFO
The Reality (Dunedin Brewery, Dunedin) INFO
Vintage Youth w/VJ Jason Barco (Orbit 19, Holiday) INFO
Nelson Mariscal (c.1949 Florida Beer Garden, St. Petersburg) INFO
David Oliver Willis Band (Ringside Cafe, St. Petersburg) INFO