The Houston Press has a nice review of the show we played Saturday.

Middle band the Jonx were likewise amazing. I’ve known Trey Lavigne casually for about six years, and have crossed paths with (Houston Press contributor) Danny Mee on a few random occasions, yet have never before managed to see them play. I am a stupid, stupid man. Pounding, gymnastic bass lines; careening guitar fission; absolute percussive pandemonium. Slint meets the Minutemen meets Fugazi meets Television meets a point in sonic space-time you didn’t even know existed.

Their mostly instrumental set flew between funky/jazzy post-punk, screaming noise, math-rock workouts, and eardrum-melting feedback drone with precision and ferocity. The Jonx are one of those bands where each individual part would be a thoroughly engaging piece of music all on its own, yet they somehow work together instead of vying for attention. Their closing song, for example, opened with a loping bass figure that could absorb you for hours in its simple effectiveness, then drew in Mee’s pounding, tribal-pulse drums, with sheets of sound slicing through courtesy of Stuart Smith’s guitar. Throughout this lengthy workout, drums and guitar came into and out of focus, providing clear direction and purpose before devolving back into chaos. The only thing keeping it all together was the steady pulse of Lavigne’s bass. The whole thing made me think that they were trying as hard as they could to lose it and that somehow, like Reagan-era theories of Mutually Assured Destruction, this antagonistic tension kept the whole thing from collapsing in on itself.

This entry is filed under Press.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.