Friday, September 18

"The Cliff Men" w/ Mind Sirens

Local 506, Chapel Hill

The ever-watchful Todd Goss alerted me to this show. "The Cliff Men" is apparently the moniker Cliff Mann (get it?) has chosen for the band he's made to play the songs from his solo album, "Om." You might best recall Cliff as the last (not current) guitarist for Pipe, and as the perpetual bass player for the Bad Checks. His solo record was an odd mishmash of great hooky rock and, well, some less-hooky rock. The sum total=good.

The Mind Sirens are the Mind Sirens. I cannot tell you the things I want to tell you about the Mind Sirens. Their leader Brian Butler has been writing songs and singing them for the past 15 or so years. They have a certain crumbling majesty about them, like mansions or tobacco barns. I could actually imagine Brian covered with kudzu, smoking and looking vaguely perturbed.