Wooden Shjips headlined Saturday night (Nov. 5) at the Empty Bottle, and their set was all about getting into one mesmerizing groove after another — a sort of quasi-psychedelic, quasi-Krautrock with hard-edge riffs over a pounding pulse of bass. The band’s latest album, West, is its first for Thrill Jockey records. Saturday’s show also featured a tight and hard-rocking set by Birds of Avalon, who sounded almost proggy. And the first band of the night, another great HoZac label garage band called the People’s Temple, were pretty hard-rocking, too — once they got started. Their disorganized pauses between songs created a sense of impending musical disaster, but the songs were strong once things started clicking.
