FRICTION NYC presents: Pretty & Nice, Fugitive Souls, The Valley Arena | 8.01.09 @ littlefield

Get Hype!!! FRICTION is back from a break with a night at new performance and art space littlefield in Brooklyn. Headlining this month’s post mid-summer classic are NYC’s The Forms with Special Guests. On the bill are Boston’s Pretty & Nice who bring their form of frenetic and danceable form of pop and punk. Just added are Fugitive Souls with their dark, guitar-based angst mixed with electronic flourishes. All the way from Long Beach, melodic post-punkers The Valley Arena open up this as usual exciting night.

Advanced tickets are available at littlefield website. Doors open at 8 PM, flyer, mp3’s, and more below.

…Pretty & Nice re-imagine the playfully manic, barbed-wire sounds of Devo, XTC, and This Year’s Model-era Elvis Costello. Their approach is so guileless and giddy, you’ll get drunk on that spazzy, sneering sound all over again. Though the rousing, delightfully messy songs on their sophomore album are neither pretty nor nice, they do show off some masterfully economical riffs and herky-jerky (if not outright dance-y) rhythms. …swells with energy and amphetamine-addled pop hooks, making it hard to ignore and near impossible not to like. [Pitchfork]
[MP3]: Pretty & Nice “Tora Tora Tora”

Brooklyn’s Fugitive Souls are here to serenade you with the dark, romantic melodies on this week’s free download, “Hang On”, off their debut EP, Strangers. Singer, Mark Allen, formerly of the The Shapes, delivers an intimate, yet powerful performance akin to Muse’s Matt Bellamy. Beautiful piano chords punctuate Allen’s vocals while disco rhythms beat across the drummer’s hi-hat…[Our Stage]
[MP3]: Fugitive Souls “A Secret Weighs A Ton”

Long Beach’s Valley Arena deliver a dynamic, well-crafted modern rock album—I guess you could say that their sound has evolved and grown up, but they bring enough of their old building blocks to the studio to have assemble something mostly new, yet hazily familiar. They’re able to strike that delicate balance of their noisier/more frenetic elements with newly focused song structure that lends itself well to their individual playing styles. The real brilliance on this record is found in the guitar/bass tones… [L.A. Record]
[MP3]: The Valley Arena “Grayscale”