Get smitten: Moggs

I fucking love when this happens. I'm innocently browsing The List for some show of worth to take place the coming weekend, skipping over the same old same old all-punk/all-metal bills that dominate many a San Francisco dive bar lineup, scanning through the Celine Dions and the Coldplays stinking up the HP Pavilions out yonder until I can pare The List down to the nitty gritty: bands that I kinda sorta am familiar with yet am still hesitant about investing more time/money in, and bands that I know absolutely nothing about. This is how I found Moggs. How the hell I hadn't heard of the Petaluma duo before now is an anomaly seeing as how they've toured the Bay Area religiously since 2001. I spotted their scheduled appearance March 15 at the Hemlock Tavern and wandered over to their MySpace page, where I was blown away upon first listen of "Smoke, Mirrors," a brooding rock groove that conjures the off-kilter guitar riffs and percussive blitzkrieg of Slint along with the unemotive (a good thing) vocals and fuzzy shoegaze wash of Autolux. Clean and pure dirty art rock at its finest. I think some covert music society may have been keeping guitarist/vocalist Justin M. and drummer/vocalist Cara LP a secret to keep this totally sparkling local band all to themselves. It's good to explore the unknown ...

Disco - Moggs

Best show of February: Deerhunter @ Mezzanine, Feb. 24, 09

They were just getting warmed up.