Some Mondays drag along until your entire being is tired and falling apart, ask but if you make it through the workday, there’s often a fun show to attend in the city. This past Monday was no exception with the lineup put together by Park Slug of Nervous, Hex Map, Crinkle Face, and Lady Bones at TT the Bear’s. The crowd was small, but eager and these fans fought through Monday to make it out alive and have fun too!

Lady Bones are amazing, and not enough of us are talking about them, but this is why I’m here for you. The young band mixes angular high-pitched guitars with heavy, fast bass and insanely talented drumming. I still can’t wrap my head around the drumming skills and haven’t been this impressed since seeing Victoria Mandanas (also of Potty Mouth) play with her band Chemical Peel. Lady Bones’ tunes are very cacophonous. The music will be smooth and catchy, lead by fun guitar riffs, but out of nowhere, it crashes and becomes this beautiful chaos. The members of Lady Bones cracked awkward and dumb jokes with one another, probably trying to fill the void of a small crowd, but the crowd was not fazed. An audience member ran in circles, clearly enjoying whatever Lady Bones felt like doing on stage no matter the circumstance.

I will admit, I wasn’t sure what sort of night I had found myself in, because I don’t usually listen to prog or metal or sludge or whatever words the kids use today to describe this kind of music. Crinkle Face changed my mind with their entertaining performance of said obscure genre. I’ve seen similar bands before, but never felt like I enjoyed the performance. These bands usually just gaze at their shoes playing their tunes and eventually leave the stage when done. Crinkle Face turns that idea around, being extremely active on stage. The lead singer/guitarist danced in his awkward way and traveled across his corner of the stage back and forth between his microphone and the amp to create intricate noise elements. The drummer was unique in that he cranked his cymbals way high in the air while playing, but he was really tall, so I guess this makes sense.

Taking us to a further state of metal and sludge experimentation, Hex Map, wailed on their instruments through fuzzed out effects. The guitarist/singer had so many pedals that I had no idea what combinations he could have been using to produce his sounds. The bassist had an interesting effects setup as well and played pseudo bass chords for most of the songs. At one point, it felt like a metal show, but then their next song would be reminiscent of early Sonic Youth, hence the vague description of their sound. It really was hard to figure out, but the crowd enjoyed every sonic adventure.

Last up for the evening was Nervous who took us back to a lighter sound. In retrospect, the lineup would have flowed very nicely with Nervous playing first. It would build up from lightness to this heavy breakdown. The set began with the band members maniacally yelling at one another, and this set the tone for the rest of it. Lead singer/guitarist Addam Zaino is zany to use a much too fitting term. His spastic dance moves across the stage made this the most entertaining set of the evening. All while dancing, Zaino continued to shred upon his guitar with finesse during songs and crack weird jokes that didn’t make any sense to potential sober members of the audience between songs. The other guitarist broke a string on his guitar and then shortly after, he couldn’t get his guitar to play at all. After fiddling around with the amp for a while, he realized it was his pickup and borrowed another guitar just with enough time to play one last song.

Zaino summed it up well, “We have so many friends, but so many problems,” but his friends didn’t mind at all. The circling, dancing man ran around some more, slid under people’s legs and proceeded to rub his butt on some spilt beer on the TT’s floor. We all had fun in the strangest way with an excellent soundtrack for the evening.