THE REDS/DRAGOON
10 p.m., White Water Tavern. $5.
There’s still a lot of local music yet to come in the fall, but so far this year I’d be hard-pressed to name an album I’ve enjoyed more than the Reds’ “Economy of Motion,” released earlier this month on Max Recordings. Deliciously new-wave, with smart, wry, pathos-filled songwriting, it’s like nothing else anyone ’round town is doing. Lead singer Johnny Mac (the band was formerly Johnny Mac and the Reds) can’t write a hook that doesn’t stick, and he fills much of the material with effervescent bass lines. Graham Cobb, formerly of il libertina, and Jason Thompson, of Hector Faceplant, round out the line-up on guitar and drums, respectively. Dragoon is the latest project of Bobby Matthews of Memphis, late of much-beloved Little Rock punk-rockers Trusty. Dragoon finds him working with the rhythm section of the Grifters, a legendary underground Memphis band. “Hard rock for people with good hair,” they say on their MySpace page. Discord will likely be the theme of their show.
A while back, I suggested “Summer” for a late-summer jam. Now that the season’s have shifted, here’s the equally awesome, “The Lights,” a song, as best I can tell, about drunken disorder.