Mall Walk releases final single, plays final show tonight!
After several years, an EP, an LP, and a pair of singles, Oakland's Mall Walk is calling it quits. On their way out, the post punk trio is releasing a 7" single on lead singer Rob Miller's Vacant Stare Records and will play their final show at the Knockout tonight. And although Mall Walk is finished, we don't need to get too down, as we're sure to see members of the band in some of their many other projects, including Dick Stusso and Blues Lawyer. Listen to the latest single followed by some of their older material and their live [...]
Live This Month: November 2017 — an audio guide to upcoming Bay Area concerts
http://media.libsyn.com/media/thebaybridged/LTM_November_2017.mp3 Download: Live This Month: November 2017 (Podcast #416) In Live This Month, we sample some of the great local and out-of-town bands performing in the coming month in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among this month's highlights are two of San Francisco's most buzzed-about acts, The She's and Giraffage, both of whom just released long-awaited new albums. The new set from The She's, "all female rock and roll quartet", is the quartet's first LP in six years, and it reveals the band's growth as songwriters while still packing a ton of melodic punch. Charlie Yin's first Giraffage full length, [...]
What’s Happening This Week? A Guide To Shows Around The Bay, Dec 12 – Dec 15
The biggest benefit show for last weekend's Oakland fire tragedy will be at the Fox Theatre this Wednesday. Monday, December 12 Julia Lewis, Brogan Bentley @ Thee Parkside Free show, $1 Anchor Steam beers, and Calebrate hosting? Yes, please. Pylon Reenactment Society, Cruel Summer, Mall Walk @ The Independent An Athens, Georgia local favorite, Pylon disbanded after guitarist Randy Bewley died in 2000. Instead of replacing him, Pylon Reenactment Society was born with members from Casper & the Cookies, The Glands, and pianist Damon Denton to pay tribute. Gladys Knight with the San Francisco Symphony @ Davies Symphony Hall The "Empress [...]
Mall Walk announce debut album ‘Funny Papers,’ stream album track
(photo: Julie Juarez) Mall Walk are set to release their long-awaited debut album, "Funny Papers" this October on Mt. St. Mtn. records. The Oakland based three-piece issued their first 7" single "Criminal Code", on their Vacant Stare label last year and have been generating buzz among post-punk circles ever since. Vocalist/guitarist Rob I. Miller builds a lush tapestry of guitar effects and disaffected vocals over the solid grooves of Nicholas Clark (drums) and Daniel Brown (bass). The band effortlessly slips into a nervous frenzy reminiscent of a guitar-driven Tubeway Army, all the while embracing full on '90s college radio noise [...]
KDVS presents: ORMF XVI Festival in Davis
There aren't many festivals where you can see 18 great bands and artists for only 17 dollars, but there is KDVS's Operation Restore Maximum Freedom Festival or to be short and real: ORMF XVI Festival. Not only does its name have two meanings — one pertaining to the freeform format of the station, and one stating that they are mostly funded by the listeners and community — this festival is for the people who may live a little to out of the way to get to the house show in Oakland or SF on a Wednesday night. This is for the [...]
Best of 2015: Rob of Vacant Stare Records and Mall Walk on The World
I attended fifty-three shows this year. That's a lot for someone who generally prefers to spend his evenings watching old sitcoms with a cat in his lap. While I don't necessarily remember all of them (no thanks to the beer bust at White Horse or El Rio's dollar beer night), one band seems to keep reappearing in my internal highlight reel, The World. The World's deconstructive take on pop music, complete with dual saxophone stabs, jarring rhythms, and textural guitar work has them sounding right at home on a compilation highlighting the no wave movement of late seventies NYC. However, [...]
Video: Mall Walk – “Pales In Comparison”
A tune that wanted, more than anything, to be a love song. It is not a love song. It may have been close at one point, but now the song is lying on its back, holding on to loss because it's the closest relative to the real thing. Everything pales in, in comparison, to the one I love, in heaven above. A desperately sad song, stoking a small, lonely fire, not to stay warm, but to reanimate the cureless disconnection with "the one I love." "Pales In Comparison" is the last song on Mall Walk's S/T Cassette EP. The video was written and directed by Drew Pearson, singer and guitarist [...]
Oakland’s Mall Walk to release new 7″, on tour in March and April
(Photo Credit: Raynie Vratari) Last year, Oakland's Mall Walk released a five-song EP comprised of minimalist guitar work, spidery, walking bass lines, and steady rhythms. It's a brand of dynamic rock with one leg in psychedelia and surf-rock, and the other in mechanical post-punk. Just announced via a premiere on Clash Magazine, Mall Walk will be releasing a new 7" via guitarist/singer Rob I. Miller's label – Vacant Stare Records – at the end of the month. The new single "Criminal Code" starts with an upbeat, surfy guitar groove but quickly navigates into darker, more pensive territory. The tight drum and bass interplay [...]
The Best of the Rest, 10/17/2014 (Cool Ghouls, Seatraffic, & more)
Cool Ghouls It’s time for our roundup of all those highlights from the last couple weeks that we weren’t able to feature on their own – here’s the best of the rest, as determined by The Bay Bridged editors. San Francisco's Cool Ghouls are gearing up for the release of their sophomore album A Swirling Fire Burning Through The Rye on November 11 via Empty Cellar, and they just dropped the third new track off that upcoming effort, the whirling, twirling, ethereal psychedelic ditty called "What A Dream I Had": Seatraffic released a cool mini-documentary about the making of their [...]
Giveaway: Win tickets to the first annual Oakland Echo
Oakland Echo may be a first-year fest, but it's already packing heat. Three nights, two Oakland venues, and an absurd number of psych bands, including headliners Lumerians on October 24 at The New Parish, Dead Meadow on October 25 at Leo's Music Club, and Cosmonauts on top of a day-long bill on October 26, also at Leo's. We're giving away a pair of tickets to each night of Oakland Echo. Send an email to mike.g@thebaybridged.com with the show you want to attend in the subject line and your full name in the body. A winner will be chosen at random and notified by [...]