The Pharmacy, in what will be the final pastoral band-photo setting of their career.

The Pharmacy, in what will be the final pastoral band-photo setting of their career.

So, this past year, for both Halloween and Election night, Seattle’s The Pharmacy took time off from tour and spent the days in New Orleans. And, they enjoyed themselves so much that they decided to move there, which we think is pretty bad ass, cause usually people move from the South to Seattle and not the other way around. We have to say that we spent Halloween and Election Day in Tulsa and Las Vegas respectively, and there is zero danger that we will move to either of those cities. (Full Disclosure: Nawlins is the city in which our dreaded Master Chief Editor In Recession adr was born. He has a tattoo of the star and crescent police logo on his arm that he just loves. Ask him about it.) And, like many smart people that have the Big Easy in their sights, they’re coming to Houston tonight for a big bill show at The Mink.

Adieu, Adieu, the closer from the latest full length Choose Your Own Adventure, runs straight through the playful pop ball room, and would be good for folks that enjoy getting the visceral speed and fury of foot tapping along to something like the Fountains of Wayne mixed in with the pleasurably bombastic orchestration of ELO. Check it out, along with other tracks from this album and others from their catalog on their MySpace.

Guitars get all dressed up to to celebrate living in a wasteland.

Guitars get all dressed up to to celebrate living in a wasteland.

Guitars, an H-Town act on the bill that features members of The Monocles, Lenny Briscoe and Alarma, has got to have the most annoying band name ever. Don’t believe me? First off, you and a friend have a race where one of you tries to locate a webpage of Guitars using Google and the other does the same with Groceries (the band that became Bring Back the Guns, who are back in the studio practicing again, btw, which we are super stoked about). Yeah, add Houston to your search term if you want, it’s a super big help believe us. Winner gets to stop doing frustrating Google searches first. Secondly, the ducking band name is plural, but because it’s a singular noun, you have to constantly dick with your sentence structure to avoid writing dippy things like “Guitars is playing tonight.” But whatever.

The band, which reminds us of a rather nice take on Television-esque post-punk and Velvet Underground-ish pre-punk, unfortunately describes themselves as “the standard bearers for the heart and soul of American music” and then later make a comment about “the barren landscape otherwise known as Houston’s independent music scene” which you may have noticed is something we spend a rather large amount of time apparently wasting our time writing about. Perhaps that is why we are being such dicks. Also, we’re going to go ahead and presume that they don’t include their other bands in this calculation of collective output as crap. Hyperbole set aside (bands: please get someone else to write your bio and especially not someone that will describe you as “the best” or “the most promising”), the music is def worth a listen, and a surprising departure from any of the acts this well of souls draws from. We dug “Waiting for A Good Time” the most, but like all three of the tracks they have on their MySpace, and are looking forward to hearing more polished versions of them.

Three other bands are slated for the stage this evening, Seattletonians The Raggedy Annes,  Lake Charles’ Magnolia Sons and Local 2 News You Can Use punk junkers Teenage Kicks. Starts at 8pm and costs $8. The Backroom at the Mink is, unfortunately, 21+.