Tonight’s Concert Pick: Blackhawks + Slutever at North Star Bar
It takes some serious cojones to name your new local band after the hockey squad that just beat the home team in the Stanley Cup Finals. Then again, Philly’s Blackhawks did drop their first single, “Sunday Morning,” back in early April—a few days prior to the Philadelphia Flyers barely squeaking into the 2009-2010 playoffs (via a shootout victory in the last game of the regular season), and well before the Chicago Blackhawks’ Patrick Kane ended the Flyers’ run by scoring the most anticlimactic, series-winning overtime goal in NHL history. So, you know, we’ll try to look past the band’s name. The local psych-pop trio—which features members of Nude Beach and Bananas Symphony—doesn’t make much of an effort to hide its love of Spaceman 3; in fact, the first recorded material the band released was a cover of Spacemen 3’s “More Rainbows (Come Down Softly).” But the plucky guitar work and rolling percussion of “Sunday Morning”—a train-hopping, bindle-toting, on-the-road track if ever there was one (available below, via Transparent)—has us looking forward to hearing more of the young band’s new material. Blackhawks performs tonight as part of North Star Bar‘s “New Music Series”; recent Philly Local Philes band Slutever and New Jersey’s Second Floor Stories open. (8 p.m., $21+, $7)