Eulipia Restaurant, once a South First Street institute, was recently replaced by Café Stritch, a new eatery that will also host live music starting with a free show on March 27 with the Hive Dwellers.

The shows will be all ages, but will also have a full bar for those under 21 (a rare combination in San Jose). Café Stritch will also serve Chromatic Coffee, as well as sandwiches, burgers, Chicken & Waffles and other food options. Café Stritch’s debut show follows the final show earlier this month at SLG Art Boutiki, a staple for live music downtown.

Hive Dwellers, the latest group with K Records head honcho and Beat Happening front man Calvin Johnson, are joined by Los Angeles bnad Tomorrows Tulips and Mike Huguenor.

The concert on March 27 starts at 8;30pm. The show is free. It is followed by another free concert featuring Pony Village, from Portland on March 29 at 9pm.

Few local bands have married musical sophistication with sweaty garage punk quite as seamlessly as San Jose’s Hard Girls. Their new album Isn’t it Worse, available for download and cassette, but not vinyl until early next year, is their best recording to date. It’s 28 minutes of unique and accessible punk rock.

We caught up with Mike Huguenor (guitar/vocals) to find out his favorite releases of 2012.

Swans – The Seer
Not since Pharoah Sanders’ heyday has a record sounded quite as cosmic or so specifically designed to reach out toward the infinite. But where Pharoah and others did so in the hope of something reaching back, the fundamental lack of the returned gesture is essential to this record. It is a testament to the creation of music as supplanting religion or religiousity: pure ecstatic creation that is its own end, devoid of ideology. Also note that the vinyl track order for this record is vastly superior to the CD/Digital version (in case you needed a reason to buy the vinyl beyond the profoundly haunting artwork). Get this record and be glad that you did, even if it sometimes frightens you.

Sebadoh – Secret EP
Unbelievably, not only did Swans write and release the best album of their entire 30 year career in 2012, but Sebahoh, completely under the radar, released their first new set of songs in 13 years. It’s an extremely good EP that not only features a couple great Barlow songs, but also has what are (to my ears) Jake Loewenstein’s best songs of all time—n particular the uncharacteristically composed “I Don’t Mind.”

The Intelligence – Everybody’s Got it Easy But Me
Few bands sound inspired by The Fall. They either sound like they want to be The Fall, or like The Fall is the absolute last thing they would ever want to sound. Seattle’s The Intelligence is one of the few bands to take clear influence from them, and their new album is full of disparate, motivated and determined urgency. The “trick,” which occurs toward the end of opener “I Like LA” is one of the most inspired bits of proof that punk lives—it just doesn’t call itself punk anymore.

Julia Holter – Ekstasis
It bothers me when people feel the need to say “female-fronted” or “chanteuse” when describing a female singer. No one ever describes a regular guy-rock band as “male-fronted,” or “chanteur” do they? Holter’s Ekstasis is a bizarre and inspiring mix of modern composition, digital-experimental and reverb heavy pop. Like “Everybody’s Got it Easy But Me” it is a record that is packed full of interesting ideas. Also, a fantastic album title.

Spiritualized – Sweet Heart, Sweet Light
Unlike the record-of-ideas, this album would be on my year end list even if it only consisted of “Hey Jane” and “Little Girl.” Sometimes you’re sick of “IDEAS” and really friggin great songs are all you want. Those are two really great songs from this male-fronted rock band.

Tearjerker – Hiding
It being 2012 and all, a little bit of “Chill Wave” is impossible to avoid (better than “Vapor Wave,” right?). Tearjerker’s 2011 single “So Dead” is one of my favorite rock songs of the past few years, and this EP is the Toronto band’s strongest release yet. All four songs carry themselves with a great self-assurance, and match the intensity of “So Dead” with their earlier work’s chiiiiiiiiill.

Raime – Quarter Turns Over a Living Line
If you are familiar with the work of Bohren und der Club of Gore (you are familiar with the work of Bohren und der Club of Gore, right?), then this record may sound a touch familiar to you, albeit in a good way. Akira Yamaoka and Nurse With Wound also spring to mind when listening to this vastly-empty-pitch-dark-hallway of an album. Raime takes goth to its logical extreme by devoiding the record of all human touches, like the animate-inanimate quarter of the album’s title.

Liars – Wixiw
Not sure if this is a “Hey, it’s the Iinternet!” kind of thing to purposefully transition from rock(ish) instrumentation to full electronic, but even thought it is more subdued, this is definitely Liars’ most interesting record since the double-whammy of “They Were Wrong, So We Drowned” and “Drum’s Not Dead.” The videos from this album are also consistently haunting and great.

Music is always a good Christmas gift, but as record stores continue to disappear, it’s getting harder to find options outside of iTunes download cards. Bands are still making physical albums these days—CDs, vinyl records, and the latest retro trend, cassette tapes. San Jose has lots of bands that have put out stellar albums this year. Here’s our list of suggestions.

Hard Girls
‘Isn’t It Worse w/ EP’
on Cassette, $5 at www.lauren-records.com
Cassette releases are now a thing—maybe not a big thing, but more labels (underground ones, mind you) are putting them out. San Jose’s Hard Girls’ new album, Isn’t It Worse, is coming out on cassette a few months before it arrives out on vinyl. The cassette comes with several bonus songs—their entire first EP, in fact. It’s only been a few years since the Hard Girls released that EP, but it is interesting to listen to listen to the old material side by side with the new. Their debut contained some interesting Jawbreaker-influenced punk-rock songs, while Isn’t It Worse is a downright sophisticated rock album. They mix ’80s post-punk and ’90s indie rock (somewhere between Pavement, Television and Silkworm), all while giving it the urgency of a sweaty basement punk band.

Who would have thought that three guys sitting around watching the Damon Wayans military comedy Major Payne would be make for such a good music video?

San Jose’s Hard Girls take this ridiculous concept as the basis for their new video. It starts with some overt over-the-top comedic elements—the band members sitting on the couch gleefully emulating Wayans’s every move—and quickly progresses into all-out Apocalypse Now mental breakdowns.

The video, which was directed by Bob Vielma (Boboso, Shinobu), contains a level of absurdity that is almost the complete opposite of Hard Girls’ serious, nuanced music, which for some reason fits perfectly. Hard Girls have for the past couple years pushed the bounds of punk into new realms, mixing influences from Pavement, Silkworm and Swans into a raw, energetic package. Their musicianship is complex and innovative and yet contains the simple purity of sweaty, driving rock beats and guttural, honest vocals.

Bass player Morgan Herrell sings lead vocals on “Major Payne.” His voice has the cracking, hoarse quality of Blake Schwarzenbach’s early work with Jawbreaker, only with greater control and a better sense of pitch. “Major Payne” starts at a furious, upbeat tempo and is layered with interesting, experimental post-punk chords. After a minute and a half of being a relatively pop-oriented punk song, it departs into a tense, instrumental space-jam for the remaining two and a half minutes.

This video is a taste of Hard Girls, long-anticipated album, Isn’t it Worse, which is set to be released on Really Records this December.

Mike Huguenor, known as the longtime lead singer/guitarist for local indie-jangle-pop group Shinobu, has released his first entirely solo EP with all instruments—excluding a trumpet part on the opening song—performed by himself.

The EP, Bardamu, was released digitally on August 1st on Quote Unquote Records, and will be available on vinyl from Suitors Club Records later this month. For fans already familiar with Huguenor’s quirky, brainy, self-depreciating songwriting, the songs from Bardamu come off a little straight-forward, at least on the first listen. Repeat listens reveal an understated weirdness different than his previous work.

The opening track, “Agues,” could almost pass for a standard guitar-driven power-pop song. Though upon further inspection, the offbeat swagger and strange post-punk chord structures are similar to his songwriting in Shinobu, just a little more subtle.

“Montreal” starts out as the most standard track on the album. It’s a guitar ballad with a linear build, but as the song progresses the softer part develops a slightly drunken beat. When the song reaches its full dynamic peak, Huguenor plays a Pavement-esque guitar solo, artistically straddling the line between in and out of key, never quite hitting that one note to give it resolution.

Fans of Huguenor’s more overt self-depreciating ramblings, will delight in the third track, “Great Plans,” which features drum machines, power-chords and a catchy slacker-anthem chorus. (“I’ve got some great plans that will never come to fruition/I’ve got some great plans that will never see the light of day.”) It’s conflicted, introverted indie rock at its finest.

Mike Huguenor is the former frontman of Shinobu, the now defunct San Jose indie rock band with a range self-described as “simplistic to annoying.” Within the scene however, they’re considered “unsung punk rock heroes.” But if you take a look at Huguenor’s output since the band’s dispersal, it’s obvious that he’s worked hard at distinguishing himself.

After Shinobu disbanded a few years ago, Huguenor formed Hard Girls with bassist Morgan Herrell and drummer Max Feshbach, once part of the Phat n’ Phunky trio Pterardon. Add ex-Operation Ivy vocalist Jesse Michaels and you get Classics of Love, who released their first full length album last month, and are set to embark on a three city tour of the East Coast tomorrow evening.

Huguenor, currently pursuing his master’s at the University of Chicago, returns to San Jose next Wednesday for a solo performance at The Blank Club. We spoke over email as he prepared to leave for New York about recording an album in three days, Mark E. Smith, and jowls.

How’s Chicago? Have you been playing music out there?

Chicago is mostly nice. Rent is cheaper, school is really good, I have a good enclave of Bay Area ex-pat friends. I had a bit of a scuffle with a shady landlord when we first moved out here, but that has finally settled.

Classics of Love just released their first album – what was the recording process like, seeing as how you were a couple thousand miles away from the rest of the group?

I actually just managed to squeeze it in before leaving for Chicago. My girlfriend and I flew out to a friend’s wedding in Utah, and when I flew back in I had a friend pick me up at the airport, and drop me off at the studio. We did all the music in about three days and then Jesse did the vocals over them. He had to do some scratch vocal tracks for me to do my backups over, since I would be gone once he started really doing the real ones, but that was the only thing that was a little bit goofy.

All of the bands that you’ve been in have maintained a heavy tour schedule. Do you still enjoy it as much as you did at 19 or 20?

I really like touring a lot. I’m leaving for NY tonight to do a few shows with Classics of Love on the East Coast before coming back for the shows at home. The one thing that I don’t really like about it is how disruptive it is to any attempts at maintaining what purists would call a “real life.”

Do you see yourself still playing music, at least in any professional capacity, twenty or thirty years from now? Does the idea of being a forty year old musician appeal to you at all?

I’ve kind of long since realized that I’ll never be able to support myself playing music. The goal is to try and find a job that will allow me to not hate myself when I’m not playing music, since I won’t be swimming in Doritos-commercial royalties any time soon. But to be frank, I don’t really think there’s anything wrong or unappealing about being a musician at 40, 50, 60, 70, what have you. That stigma of it being something for young people who are just avoiding adulthood, I think, is largely just an American thing. Which is too bad. Music doesn’t suddenly become uninteresting or unfulfilling once you have jowls. I also don’t think you have to be young to be in touch or have something to say. Look at Tom Waits, Michael Gira, Mark E. Smith, etc. Those guys are getting up there, and they’re all still doing cool, interesting things.

I think one of your biggest strengths is songwriting. With Jesse acting as the impromptu frontman of Classics of Love, have your duties shifted somewhat? Or do you still write as much? And if so, how does it feel to have Jesse Michaels sing your lyrics?

I don’t write any of the lyrics for Classics, that definitely is an area where Jesse just does his thing. For that band in particular my input is more reactive, suggestive, and playful. It’s fun, I like it a lot. I still write my own stuff for the other projects.

Humor and literature seem to inform your music to a large extent, whereas with Jesse, it’s a bit more politically-oriented – at least now. He’d explained this somewhat by saying that he wants his “art to be a service,” which to me, is of the utmost importance – for art to be functional. Do you feel any such obligation?

I really believe in art. Aesthetically, and epistemically. I tend to shy away from the social critique or political aspects of writing, mostly because I’m not very good at saying anything in that way. Politics has never been something that I can draw creative rage from. It just makes me feel impotent and awful. But I think that music and literature and film and art all have the ability to give an individual a feeling of the ecstatic. That’s what I’m in it for, at least.

You’re playing solo next week back in San Jose, and I realized that I’ve never heard you play alone. Will it be a significant sea change from the stuff with Classics, Hard Girls, or Shinobu?

It will likely be a selection of Shinobu and Hard Girls songs, possibly some new ideas I’m working on, and maybe one or two terrible proto-punk songs that I’ve been thinking about repurposing.

I know you’re a big fan of The Fall, and I see a lot of Mark E. Smith’s influence in your music. How does that influence bear out?

I absolutely love The Fall. I think they are the most interesting band of all time. There’s just no one like them. I think that a lot of the music I have made so far doesn’t sound all that much like The Fall, but that’s mostly because once you try to sound like them it just becomes completely obvious that that’s what you’re going for. They’re too distinctive. In an interview Mark E. Smith did one time, he said all the bands who claimed to be influenced by them just sounded like the Talking Heads to him. Then, he said, that the Talking Heads were “the enemy.” That’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard a musician say. While neither Shinobu nor Hard Girls sound much like them, I think that their willingness to bring in an esoteric humor, and their willingness to just let a song devolve into absolute nonsense have really struck a chord with me. Plus, I think like all the bands I’ve been in, I’ve tried to use sort of elements of punk music as a starting point, without really trying to be a “punk band.” The Fall does that better than anyone.

Huguenor plays a solo set at The Blank Club on March 21 with Oddly Even and Orangutang. Free admission.