The Growlers do best what Jonathan Richman loved most: create an atmosphere. And if you’ve ever wondered why the band’s greatest photos have them peering through fog and smoke, now you know. That’s where they feel most at home (there, or in the legendary Growlers bus). A band like this could only exist right about now—they draw from so many bizarrely disconnected sources of inspiration (African psychedelic, busted-up late-’50s weirdo rock, Cle-punks suck as the Electric Eels and the Mirrors) that the world just simply hadn’t generated enough raw material for them to use until about 2001. It’s about 20 minutely varied kinds of rock N roll happening all at once, and if it’s good enough for Bill Murray—who followed ’em all over South By Southwest—it should work great for you, too.
Thu., Dec. 23, 9 p.m., 2010
