“It’s deceptively night-ish in here right now,” remarked the bass player during the afternoon set he and his mates were performing yesterday at the Cakeshop. Women, an all-dude quartet from an Alberta, Canada, was offering, during an appreciably prompt 4:30 start time, its jagged indie updates on the work of its fore bearers, principally The Velvet Underground and The Zombies.

It was a reasonably tame show, for certain, but one crowd member spat out an emphatic “woop!” as the guitar player lead into “Black Rice” from its buzzy two-tone starting point. The set was appreciably varied, with the main vocalist singing a long stretch over a skronky and unchanging anti-chord on his guitar, and the drummer occasionally matching melodic wits with his stringed cohorts by tapping out patterns on a glockenspiel. The group shifted from molding a messy and beautiful gel (”Group Transport Hall”) to being spectacularly intricate without it ever reaching pomposity or superfluousness. Women is playing a great many times this week, and anyone doing serious CMJing is highly advised to catch an encore set.

Jens Lekman and The So So Glos each also offered exceptional shows that, unfortunately, won’t be reprised this week, and both of which carried late into the night. Lekman had promised a “singing DJ” set for the 11 slot of the Brooklyn Vegan showcase at the Music Hall Of Williamsburg. He came out to spin a good 45 minutes later than listed (a frustratingly standard occurrence at most CMJ shows). The recently-imported-to-Brooklyn Swede didn’t sing much at first, perhaps crooning a bit to Lykke Li’s “Dance Dance Dance” (even if mostly off mic) before moving on to Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy” and a track from his Gothenburg pals The Tough Alliance. Jens looked lost in his own nectar-sweetened world for most of the set, headphones over his ears as he spun from a colorfully lit back corner of the stage. He came forward to croon over renditions of his own tunes (kicking off his mini-set “Into Eternity”) before getting raptastic with some Kid Sister and a remixed-with-samples-Jens-has-used pass at R. Kelly’s and Ludacris’ verses from “Rockstar.”

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Is every fucking thing The So So Glos do blogworthy? Your SAK correspondent says Yes! Two new songs from their upcoming Tourism/Terrorism EP–both the marchingly militant, vibra-slapped “Island Loops,” and the radio-melting, FCC-fucking single “Throw Your Hands Up”–have been posted to MySpace. Go cure those See-Saw Blues.

(Photo by Eddie Brannan)

Your SAK correspondent helped make sure The New York Press Best Of Manhattan issue made a little less sense with several shout outs to some keepin’-it-real Brooklyn peeps.

Apart from the love for Entertainment4Every1 and Sleep When Dead NYC above, go here for SAK-penned picks for Best Local Rock Band (like you didn’t already know it was The So So Glos?) and Best DIY Venue (Schmarket Schmotel, of shcourse).

Don’t let The So So Glos know that your SAK correspondent told you this, but their ridiculously good new 9-track EP, Tourism / Terrorism, comes out this Election Day (November 4th). You will be the lamest kid on your block if you don’t have a copy.

There are no publicly available studio recordings yet, but speaking of blocks, here’s a YouTubed, blown-speaker rendition of T/T’s “My Block”:

TODAY!:

“At 1PM on the BOWERY JMZ platform, at the back of METROPOLITAN VIA WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE side, THE SO SO GLOS are going to be playing as the crowds gather. We’re all then going to board the last car of the train together and THE ESKALATORS are going to play as the train crosses over The East River, and then we’ll all get off the train together at MYRTLE and parade together over to GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY, where the festivities will go down in their awesome junkyard back space, still in the humid outdoor summer air, but protected from possible drizzles by the crazy corrugated steel roof.”

“[ GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY ]

KNYFE HYTS
Aa (Big A little a)
Consider The Source
Fiasco
Puttin’ On The Ritz
Lidia Stone
The Beets
Thompson
USAISAMONSTER
Radiates

3PM / ALL AGES / FREE

@
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY (indoor / outdoor in the covered junkyard!)
[ MZ > Myrtle / J > Kosciuszko ]

If you’re at all confused, which is possible, but excited, which is likely, email zombie@sleepwhendeadnyc.com immediately :)”

Your SAK correspondent told you about the So So Glos already, but in case y’all was sleepin’, this week’s column clamps it down, 750-words style.

BONUS: Read our west coast SAK correspondent’s take on an entirely different city’s punk princes: The Black Lips, over at Crawdaddy!

The So So Glos, who live at Market Hotel, tore it up for about twenty people at Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Lost and Found last night. The guys (3 of the 4 are brothers, raised in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge ‘hood) stood out front, pre-performance, smoking cigarettes, wearing leather jackets, telling punk-rock tales of touring and breaking jaws (”I got arrested,” one of them told me, regarding an intra-band fight one night) and just being awesome dudes.

You may recall a previous rave from me on the NY Press Blog, so I wanted to catch them again to make sure I wasn’t imaging their raw punk power when I caught them in Austin last month. I most certainly did not. See this band! (and not just in the extra photos after jump).

Tour dates at MySpace.

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