“Take a Hike” Thunder Power from Lindsay Trapnell on Vimeo.

We have had our eye on the excellent indie-pop band Thunder Power for a while. The Omaha Nebraska sextet create compellingly unique music that has elements of early 10,000 Maniacs and Belle and Sebastian, but ultimately sounds original. We were pleased to learn that Thunder Power planned their first extensive tour for this Summer, and more delighted when they accepted our invitation to perform at our June 19 NYCTaper Presents show at Monster Island Basement.

Thunder Power begins the tour this week in the midwest and travel east throughout the month:
Jun 12 2009 8:00P Eclipse Records St. Paul MI
Jun 13 2009 9:00P Stonefly Brewery Milwaukee WI
Jun 14 2009 9:00P Ronny’s Chicago IL
Jun 16 2009 8:00P Frankie’s Toledo OH
Jun 18 2009 9:00P Sugar City Buffalo, NY
Jun 19 2009 8:00P NYC Taper Presents @ Monster Island
Jun 21 2009 9:00P Slumberland New Brunswick NJ
Jun 22 2009 9:00P Monkey Town Brooklyn NY
Jun 23 2009 7:00P The Camel Richmond VA
Jun 24 2009 9:00P Circus Columbus OH
Jun 25 2009 8:00P Blue Rock Tavern Cincinnati OH
Jun 26 2009 9:00P Booby’s Carbondale IL
Jun 27 2009 8:00P Czar Bar Kansas City MO
(more August dates at Thunder Power MySpace page)

Legendary British post-punkers The Mekons return to NYC this Summer for two dates, their first local shows in almost two years. In the Fall of 2007, we captured The Mekons at the Gramercy Theatre in an over two-hour tour de force performance.

On July 31, The Mekons will play the Bell House in Gowarnus in a show that is being billed as “semi-acoustic”. Tickets are on sale from the Bell House website.

The Mekons will also perform at the Mercury Lounge on August 1, although that show is yet to be listed on the Bowery Presents website. The Mercury show is now listed on the Bowery site here.

We are really excited to present another great evening of music, featuring five outstanding bands from various locations and genres.

Here is the ToddP listing:

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Friday, June 19th @ MONSTER ISLAND BASEMENT

|| NYCTAPER PRESENTS

|| El Jezel
|||| Coyote Eyes
|||||| Thunder Power – from Omaha, 1st NYC show
|||||||| the Rest – from Ontario, 1st US show

| MONSTER ISLAND BASEMENT |
128 River St @ Metropolitan Ave | Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Bedford, G-Metropolitan, JM-Marcy | 8:30pm | all ages | $8

| EL JEZEL |
Queens-based intelligent post-gaze trio, El Jezel broke out at the StereoActive CMJ show last October.

| COYOTE EYES |
Deli Magazine’s band on the rise in February, this angular indie-pop trio draws comparisons from Deerhoof to early 80s Brit-goth.

| THUNDER POWER |
An Omaha-based indie-pop band that draws references as classic as early 10,000 Maniacs and Belle & Sebastian, their extensive Summer tour (Midwest and East Coast) brings them to Brooklyn for their first-ever NYC show.”

| THE REST |
This Ontario-based brilliant chamber-pop band has just released one of the early contenders for album of the year, Everyone All At Once. Chosen as NPR song/artist of the day last month. Their CD Release Tour will bring The Rest to the U.S. for the first time.

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The show begins at 8:30 pm (doors).
We have added a special guest to begin the night. The New Orleans band Hurray For The Riff Raff will begin promptly at 9:00pm (they have another show later that night). NYCTaper readers are familiar with Hurray For The Riff Raff from our wonderful experience with them last December at Pianos.

We will be posting often about this show over the next few weeks, including mp3s, live links and potentially some interviews.

Last year we were fortunate to capture Steve Wynn and the Miracle 3 perform Steve’s old band The Dream Syndicate album The Days of Wine and Roses in its entirety. That show, performed in July at Maxwell’s, exceeded all of our expectations and breathed new life into that classic 1982 album.

This year Steve and the Miracle 3 will tackle the next album in the Dream Syndicate’s catalog, 1984’s The Medicine Show. This show takes place on June 27, 2009 at the Bell House in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

A little about Medicine Show:

“Despite charting on the Billboard list of top LPs and topping the CMJ singles chart for 2 months, the album is met with mixed reviews in the US where the band’s debut album “The Days of Wine and Roses” had been a critical sensation. Overseas it was a different story. “Medicine Show” received the highest accolades across Europe and the UK (the album made the London Guardian’s “Top 40 Albums of the First 40 Years of Rock” list in the mid-90s), sowing the seeds for a career that has been strong for bandleader Steve Wynn to the present day.”

“Medicine Show is the weirdest, most idiosyncratic, nastiest, funniest and most revealing record the Dream Syndicate ever made,” said Wynn in the liner notes from the record’s 1991 reissue. “It’s also my favorite.”

Last year’s performance of Days of Wine and Roses is still available on nyctaper [here].