Buffalo Tom returns, after never really going away

[Bronson's back from a little time off. Not that he'll get any rest tonight

...]

Tonight might be the busiest show-going night in recent memory. So before I post my

piece from today's print edition on a group I consider one of the most underrated bands

of the 1990s, Buffalo Tom, here's a rundown on what's going on:

Bodies of Water plays a show

celebrating the release of their joyous new album "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will

Blink" at 8 tonight in Pershing Square downtown. It's free. ... The material from

Patrick Park's forthcoming album

"Everyone's in Everyone" (due Aug. 7) gets a full-band treatment when the

singer-songwriter (pictured) finishes up his July residency tonight at Spaceland. ...

The aforementioned (two items down on the blog) Service Group show also features the

wildly fun Henry Clay People.

... Speaking of fun: Say Hi to Your

Mom -- L.A. native Eric Elbogen, et. al. -- has relocated from New York to Seattle,

and tonight they are back in Hollywood, playing at the Knitting Factory. ... The Rapture

rock the Mayan, with a little help from from local lads Foreign Born. ... Portugal the Man plays the Troubadour. ...

Another new L.A. quartet exploring  Anglophile rock, Buckfast, hold forth at the gig. ... Chromeo, along with Flosstradamus,  plays

the Hell Ya! night at the Echo. ... Sea

Wolf (8:30 p.m.) and Midnight

Movies (9:30) play the free festivities at the Hammer Museum. ... Tegan & Sara

harmonize at the Malibu Performing Arts Center. ... Suki Ewers heads the bill at Tangier. ... The By and By play the Silverlake Lounge.

... And Filter is sponsoring something at the

Roxy called Revenge of the Sunset Strip headlined by J*DaVeY, and while I'm not sure what about this

constitutes revenge I'm sure somebody who goes to the Sunset Strip will write and tell

me.

Is that enough? I surely missed some things.

◊ ◊ ◊

And now a few words about Buffalo

Tom:

Without a trace of nostalgia, Bill Janovitz is talking about how the

passing years have thinned the hair, added lines to faces, changed relationships and

rearranged priorities. “All of that hopefully becomes the stuff of songwriting,” the

Buffalo Tom singer-guitarist says. “You still want to tap into the same interpersonal

and emotional places.”


With the release this month of “Three Easy Pieces,” its first album in nine years, the

Boston trio — whose bristling, exuberant guitar pop made them alt-rock favorites in the

early- and mid-1990s (think of them as the Shins of their era) — find those places, some

18 years after issuing the first of their six albums.

Janovitz and bandmates

Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis never broke up after 1998’s “Smitten,” but fatherhood

and their professional lives relegated Buffalo Tom to the back burner, except for

occasional hometown shows. Old anthems such as “Taillights Fade” and “Soda Jerk” gave

those college-rock fans a buzz, but the trio discovered during “very organic” recording

sessions that they still had more music in them.

“It was a very emotionally daunting prospect to get together again, now
that we’re fathers and working jobs,” he says. “But we’re better at
weeding out what’s truly important. I guess that’s called growth.”

The new album, sonically the kin of 1992’s “Let Me Come Over” and ’93’s “Big Red Letter Day,” certainly rings with a familiar quality — as Janovitz says, “that bittersweet/melancholy thing we’re known for.”

“We’re better at distilling what we want to say,” he says. “Before there was always that opaque Buffalo Tom imagery. Now I think the focus has gotten a lot sharper.

||| Buffalo Tom, with Juliana Hatifield opening, plays the El Rey Theatre

tonight.