Arlene’s Grocery
95 Stanton St. between Orchard & Ludlow Sts.
Thursday, August 4, 11, 25, $8, 9:00
212-358-1663
www.arlenesgrocery.net
www.myspace.com/thetwees
We’re sick of twee bands. We’re liable to go all John Belushi over the next whiny-ass group that offers their love another cherry. So it’s a good thing for us — and them —that the Twees are anything but. Instead, the New York City four-piece plays guitar-and-drum-drenched decidedly nonwimpy garage rock that evokes early Strokes and Velvet Underground-era Lou Reed. On their latest EP, the five-track These Girls, guitarist Jon Zuckerman, drummer Daniel Edwards, singer-bassist David Kaplan, and vocalist-guitarist Jason Abrishami focus on relationships gone wrong, but they’re not crying in their beer. “You got it all twisted up / I try to let it go, but you, you don’t give up / Can you take one more hint / That I’m through with you / And you, you’re stuck with him,” Abrishami sings on “Give It Up.” On “On the Spot” he adds, “Oh you know that I don’t care / This city is a playing field / I don’t think I can / Descend to this anymore.” And on the pure pop gem “Wishful Thinking Youth,” he really lets loose: “She said I don’t see what you see in me / Sure, we’re young, but we don’t have dignity / You got what I want, but not what I need . . . anymore!” The Twees, who were voted by the fans to play last month’s Vans Warped Tour at the doomed Nassau Coliseum, will bring their high-energy postpunk attitude and sound to Arlene’s Grocery for a three-show Thursday-night 9:00 residency that begins August 4 with Gaz Ellis (7:00), Breaking Laces (8:00), Atomic Square (10:00), Crush of Empires (11:00), and the Barettas (12 midnight) and continues August 11 with Lindsay Bloom (7:00), the Dalliance (8:00), Dirty Pollyanna (10:00), Crush of Empires (11:00), and Hearts and Parts (12 midnight) and August 25 with Sheng Sway (10:00) and, once again, Crush of Empires (11:00).