At the small Team Love record label headquarters and RavenHouse Gallery in New Paltz, I have seen experimental cellists and feedback sculptors, indie prog bands and solo performers so caterwauling, cathartic and loud of voice and of amp that Lemmy Kilmeister might have even noticed that they were in the same room. Team Love, in other words, is not afraid to pair literally any kind of music with the wine, cheese and grapes of an opening.
On Monday, January 19, three bands will once again test the spatial and sonic limits of the charming Church Street space when the New York City band Alice appears with Bard’s Jawbreaker Reunion and the New Jersey based mood-folk project Trace Mountains.
Jawbreaker Reunion, it should be noted, is not an actual reunion of the influential ’90s punk group, but rather a lively and irreverent quartet from the Bard milieu. They play a delirious basement pop/punk distinguished by lo-fi defiance and by genuinely strong tunes, surreal lyrics and savvy ensemble moves.
“Tearing Down Posters,” the longest song on 2014’s joyride Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club, clocks in at 2:31. The double-time driving punk of “Beer and Loathing” lifts off with a genuine singalong chorus worthy of Titus Andronicus and/or the Pogues. The singers are relegated to the basement of these mixes, but time spent with the lyric sheet will be richly rewarded. What are ultimately so winning and beautiful about Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club’s ten tracks are their rapid bipolar vacillations between straight-up collegiate partying and straight-up collegiate fretting, jonesing and moping.
Alice/Jawbreaker Reunion/Trace Mountains, Monday, January 19, 6 p.m., all ages, $5, Team Love RavenHouse Gallery, 11 Church Street, New Paltz.
Join the family! 
