I've decided to stay in DC, and I think I'll be here for a few weeks -- there's too many great bands to discuss.
Back in the early '00s, there was quite the resurgence in DC post hardcore scene, as bands like Q & Not U, Del Cielo and The Beauty Pill started playing out. Another big part of this "scene" was Black Eyes, a band made up of ex-members of The No-Gos, The Better Automatic, among others. The band was fierce, and from the moment they came together in 2001, they attracted the attention of just about everyone by melding pummeling post-punk dynamics with no wave, free jazz and dub. When I first saw them at a house party in New Brunswick, NJ in 2002, I was knee deep in beer an hour before the band went on, but lead singer Hugh McElroy was nice enough to keep me entertained with stories of random, almost forgotten DC bands.
The show was everything I expected it to be and over the next two years, I saw the band any time I could, including a way too hot set at Philadelphia's First Unitarian Church in the late summer of 2003 where the band played with Q & Not U and packed close to 500 people into the cramped church. Luckily for us, the set was worth braving, by far one of the best shows I saw that year. The following year brought a new album, but also the band's dissolution. Since then, McElroy has played in Horses and Sentai, runs Ruffain Records in DC, while Daniel Martin-McCormick and Jacob Long are in San Francisco, with Long records by himself under the name Earthen Sea.
Download: "Deformative" [mp3] /// "False Positive" [mp3] /// Buy here
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