Review: Audacity, Hunters at The Hotel Utah Saloon
Audacity (Photo: Alyssa Pereira) The trek to the Hotel Utah Saloon is not an easy (or particularly safe) one. It’s deep inside SOMA and its foreboding location (and history) presupposes a gritty, raucous vibe. The stage room is tiny and has an antiquated loft, which patrons enter at their own risk. In other words, the Hotel Utah is made for garage punk. Immediately after rolling into the Saloon, I ran into Audacity's Matt Schmalfeld. The shaggy blonde-maned frontman is exceptionally polite and a bit reserved—a quality he abandons onstage with his Los Angeles-based band. As he heads past the bar [...]
The Bananas, Audacity, Hunters, Caldecott to play Hotel Utah Friday
Audacity Sacramento punk vets The Bananas are uniting with Audacity, Brooklyn's Hunters, and Oakland's Caldecott at the City's infamously brash Hotel Utah Saloon. While it's obvious that this will be a raucous, high-energy show, new music from Audacity and Hunters (who recently signed to Mom + Pop) says the bands will be roaring extra loud to some new jams. Southern California-bred Audacity's new release, Butter Knife, which dropped October 29 via Suicide Squeeze, is consummate, amped up lo-fi garage rock—a scrappy, grime-lined collection of grungy riffs and clamoring vocals. Following that will be Hunters' eclectic live versions of thundering tracks from last [...]