Midweek Scenester Pick: Wavves and Rooftop Vigilantes at Jackpot / Zombie Book of the Week: Colson Whitehead's Zone One

Perhaps you know Wavves as the band with the annoying extra "v" in its name, or the band that had the legendary on-stage meltdown in Barcelona, or the band with Best Coast's boyfriend in it. Or perhaps you actually know some of their songs.

At any rate, they are back in Larryville at the Jackpot tomorrow.

Let's see if Pitchfork digs their new EP:

"Side B of Life Sux, well, kinda sux: The title of "Poor Lenore" is the first time Williams has implied he's ever picked up a book in his life, but the turgid, 3rd-gen grunge suggests he found that Poe anthology right next to a used copy of Frogstomp."

Ouch.

Opening up (naturally) is the regrouped Rooftop Vigilantes. Real Pony Glue is officially available, and we're jamming "Love Garden Hold Policy" (clocking in at 1 minute exactly) on Bandcamp right this minute. It's so hip when bands reference places we know and love!

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If you're like us, you're pretty fucking bored with zombies these days, but we're fans of Colson Whitehead's postmodern literary shenanigans in books like John Henry Days, so we'll have to check out his new literary zombie novel Zone One, which has been voted Esquire's #1 pick of the fall (Chip: "I trust Esquire's literary choices completely."):

"This isn't Colson Whitehead taking preening batting-practice swings for the amusement of a twitterized fan base...In Whitehead's suddenly sure hands this is a stressed nation blinking its eyes in the dim light of a train platform, or a farm, or a ruined city, working to distinguish who might be there to do us harm. You don't need to have lived through a lifetime of movies about zombies or a single showing of An Inconvenient Truth to understand that Zone One formulates an essential equation: the measure of what we once had versus the hint of what we have left."

Hey now! We're part of Whitehead's "twitterized fan base." He even responded directly to us recently, which gave us a true literary boner!

Read Esquire's full piece here



















If you need a literary zombie fix in the meantime, we recommend George Saunders' absolutely vicious and hilarious short story "Sea Oak," in which dissatisfied and very dead Aunt Bernie comes back to life determined to do things better this time around:

"Well I am going to have lovers now, you fucks! Like in the movies, big shoulders and all, and a summer house, and nice trips, and in the morning in my room a big vase of flowers, and I'm going to get my nipples hard standing in the breeze from the ocean, eating shrimp from a cup, you sons of bitches..."

It's available in full on-line over here . Thank us later when you're recommending it to all your freaky friends.