KOLARS // The Sh-Booms
Cat’s Cradle Back Room 300 E Main St., Carrboro, NC, United StatesKOLARS is one of those rare acts which descends from another dimension, struts its sequin skin, blares it’s unabashed musical thrill ride and leaves audiences with their mouths on the floor. Rob Kolar twists and turns as he sings imaginative lyrics with a raw swagger. He spins his guitar as notes sail and scramble through the room. A presence that embodies elements of Elvis and Marc Bolan with a ragged punky edge. The magnetic, one of a kind, Lauren Brown uses her whole body as a percussion instrument, tap dancing rhythms with her feet while simultaneously playing a full stand up kit with her arms. An alluring hybrid of Mo Tucker and Gene Kelly with a dash of Iggy Pop wildness. Yes, there have been iconic duos before but none like this. On record KOLARS are slightly more subtle and nuanced. Rob produces and mixes the music and has created a genre melding soundscape influenced by his film scoring. The band has inspired evocative descriptions such as “space blues,” “glam-a-billy” and “desert disco.” The style combines elements of new wave, blues, pyschedelia, glam, folk, disco and punk. The production experiments are infused into the live show. In essence, the duo are a hybrid of modern technology and raw rock and roll. KOLARS have toured extensively across the US, Canada and Europe, playing many festivals and concerts in front of thousands. They have headlined national tours and have shared bills with Spoon, LP, Julian Casablancas & The Voidz, STRFKR, The Kills, Best Coast, Shonen Knife, RZA, Pussyriot, Built To Spill, The Horrors, The Growlers, Alanis Morissette, Funkadelic, The Revivalists, Father John Misty, The Roots, Nikki Lane, Strawberry Alarm Clock and many others. The Sh-Booms There’s this dynamic that churns hard in The Blurred Odyssey, the debut full-length album by ascendant Orlando garage-soul enterprise The Sh-Booms, out March 22, 2019 on Limited Fanfare Records. The music pumps with the hot, red blood of life irrepressible. But there’s a cloud on the horizon, the doomed sense of life’s finitude, that fueled these songs. Rather than dead-end nihilism, though, it’s resulted in the kind of urgent, creative friction that Hunter S. Thompson could get down with. In making this album, The Sh-Booms have dug through the blur of life, swam through a sea of booze, to find love and truth in the shadow of the void. Although a soul band through and through, the grease and bite they’ve been picking up in the years leading up to this big step out have been forged in the bad company of punk and garage bands. From that underground now rises a new hurricane of big orchestration, maximum stomp and fresh intent. It’s a little ache and a lot of party all wrapped up in a wrecking ball. Since their 2011 inception, The Sh-Booms have become kind of a thing in their native scene and beyond. Besides perennial winners of “Best Soul Act” in the Orlando Weekly’s big annual Best of Orlando issue, they’ve been tapped to share the stage with national names like The Roots, Of Montreal, Talib Kweli, KRS-One, Jacuzzi Boys, Budos Band, Big Freedia, Lee Fields, St. Paul & the Broken Bones and The B-52’s (whom the band toured with in 2017 and 2018). They’ve been featured on NPR, their music has been made it on TV (CW’s Supergirl) and they’ve played Austin City Limits, Okeechobee Music Festival, SunFest and Gasparilla Music Festivals.
