The Trims have been playing melancholic post-punk with pop ambitions for nearly a decade now, and if you’ve ever seen one of their high energy live performances, you know they’ve got the chops. While frontman Gabe Maciel’s confessional poetry has always been concerned with loss, regret and heartbreak, sonically the band’s latest record Julian Street finds the San Jose natives embracing increasingly bright hooks. The results are decidedly danceable. Think Two Door Cinema Club if they bled Orange Sauce. Catch them at The Ritz this Saturday with Living Among Giants, Sweet Hayah and DJ Chuy Gomez.

The Trims
Sat, 8pm, $10+
The Ritz, San Jose

Listening to his band’s new music, Gabriel Maciel says he can’t help but hear the difference. “I can just tell, there seems to be more motivation and passion,” says the founder, guitarist and lead singer for San Jose indie trio The Trims.

Eight years after the release of their first full-length album, We Cried For Fun, the band is excited to celebrate their new sound and new 10-song collection, Julian Street, with a record release show set for June 22 at the BackBar SoFa.

Written by Maciel and drummer Billy Brady, the album finds The Trims in a creative sweet spot—one that reminds Maciel of the very beginnings of the band’s journey. On Julian Street the band experiments with synths and new rhythms, while Maciel incorporates a number of influences into his singing—early 2000s alternative bands, classic ’70s rock and old Spanish romantic melodies.

“If you want to lift weights it’s on here,” he says. “If you want to love someone, it’s on here. If you’re sad that you lost someone, it’s on here. If you’re feeling hopeful, it’s on here.”

On Julian Street The Trims take listeners on a journey through loaded punk riffs (“Turn Out The Lights”), crooning love ballads (“Nobody Else”) and an acoustic tear-jerker (“Gone Away”).

“We didn’t want to stay stuck in the same old Trims sound,” Maciel says of the album’s experimentations.

The hopeful tones underlying the album stem from a re-established sense of discovery and purpose in the band, which Maciel says he and his bandmates found after taking a much-needed break.

“It felt like we had kind of lost our mojo,” he says, explaining that The Trims had fallen into a bit of a funk over the past two years.

“We’re in complete and total harmony within the band,” he says, suddenly realizing that the Pharrell Williams song “Happy” is playing through the speakers behind him. “Perfect song! Because we’re happy!”

Although worried about coming off cliché, Maciel made it clear that he wanted listeners to resonate with the optimism felt when creating the album. “I want them to realize that life can be shitty,” he says. “But that that’s okay and that it can be a good thing, because just as much as life can be shitty it can be fucking awesome.”

The Trims
Jun 22, 8pm, $12+
BackBar SoFa

Encouraged by the success she had booking two local bands at last year’s South By South West, San Jose-based promoter Barbara Wahli—better known as Barb Rocks—is upping the ante this year, throwing her very own showcase at the yearly music, technology and film festival.

She’s calling her showcase Ugly Whale. The name is an homage to her recently passed father, Ueli Wahli, whose name was consistently autocorrected to “Ugly Whale” in Microsoft Word and other word processing programs—a phenomenon he good-naturedly embraced. She has already locked down Darwin’s Pub, a 300-seat venue in a prime location in downtown Austin, and she’s launched a Kickstarter to raise the $3,500 booking fee. All donations inch Barbara closer to giving five exceptional Bay Area bands the national exposure they deserve.

Wahli has long been a champion of the Bay Area scene (and the South Bay scene in particular). She’s been bustin’ down doors for local bands for years. In the last five, Wahli’s hand has guided the efforts of several festivals including the Santa Cruz Music Festival and Left Coast Live. And she recently started a local chapter of Balanced Breakfast—a weekly local music industry meeting aimed at bolstering the local scene.

Check out the video for her Kickstarter campaign and get acquainted with the delegation of Bay Area bands she plans to bring out to Texas next month:

The Trims are one of San Jose’s hottest bands at the moment. Sporting spacious guitar riffs, new wave/disco rhythm, and brain-burrowing hooks, their work has been featured on MTV’s The Real World, they’ve caught the ear of Live 105’s Aaron Axelsen, and they’re booked to play Bottlerock 2015.

Eyes on the Shore are an exceptionally stylish quartet that land somewhere between Motown, surf rock and post-modernist ambience. One moment, they power through heavy melodies, the next, they dive into a spectral, airy soundscape.

The Frail are an electro-pop group that found each on craigslist and incorporate elements of soulful lyrics, buzzy synth melodies, and soaring guitar to create a mature, and thoroughly modern identity.

The Go Ahead started out as Jesús and the Rabbis, an improvisational, funky jam band, but after adding lead singer Kyna Wise, a couchsurfing San Francisco roomate, their funk roots have grounded their growth into more of a classic rock band.

Beautiful Machines employ custom drum and keyboard kits infused with a bounty of sounds to create their harmonious, ethereal, and futuristic electro pop jams. They belong to a rare class of electronic groups whose prowess is most on display during live performances

Up and coming San Jose new wave band The Trims celebrated the release of their new self-titled record, playing to a sold-out crowd at The Blank Club on Friday. The local quartet ripped through a high-energy set of angular, post-punky dance-rock tunes, including their new single, “Now You’re Gone.”

Watch the video for the song below, then click through some of the best photos from the night, taken by Metro photographer Eric Belladonna.

There are two things you can be sure of when it comes time for the annual Barb Rocks Birthday Bash, back on Saturday night at Neto’s in Santa Clara.

(1) Promoter/band manager Barbara Wahli will book a handful of some of the best local and regional bands in the area. This year she’s got The Trims, Pounders, Stormy Strong and Fallen Short.

(2) Something unexpected will happen.

For years bands have made it a tradition to surprise her on her birthday by playing covers they know she knows and then coaxing her onstage to sing them. (One year it was Dramarama’s “Anything Anything,” another it was Pat Benetar’s “Bad Reputation.”)

Now she’s on to them and even announces that you should expect a surprise performance on the Facebook event page.

Barb Rocks Birthday Bash
Neto’s, Santa Clara
Sat, 8pm; $8 adv/$10 door

LIVE 105 has been on the forefront of the EDM movement for years, promoting it even back when it was still a niche genre. In recent years at the BDF festival, the Subsonic Tent—an extension of Aaron Axelsen’s electronic music show—has become a bigger part of the festival, encompassing a bulk of the festival’s more interesting bookings.

In fact, even on the other stages this year, the strongest bands were the ones who stylistically could just as easily fit on the Subsonic Tent. Below are some of the highlights from this year:

Capital Cities
By far the strongest act to play the Festival Stage this year. Capital Cities, a new duo from LA, brought disco-infused synth-pop beats to BFD with a live guitarist, bassist and a trumpet player. Two vocalists, one tall with a mustache and the other short with a bushy beard, both equally shared vocal duties with a fun, somewhat goofy stage presence.

Midway through their set they taught the audience the “Capital Cities Shuffle,” which was simple enough for anyone to execute. They played a bizarre, slow-downed rendition of the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” and an upbeat dance-version of Sinead O’Conner’s Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U.” They closed with their buzz single, “Safe and Sound,” a catchy dance-pop song.

PHOTOS: Check out the Metroactive photo gallery.

Wallpaper
It’s incredible the attention Wallpaper have been getting the past year considering that it’s basically an ironic pop act with elements of R&B, hip-hop, all done through a weird performance-art lens. But now it seems the ridiculous character known as Ricky Reed is becoming an actual pop star. What has been their biggest selling point is how strong of a performer Reed is and his ability to engage the audience and get them moving, but the entire band has become a theatrical spectacle.

At the Subsonic Tent, where they played this year, their three drummers pulled out some amazing synchronized moves, including the final breakdown of “Fucking Best Song Everrr” when the drummers stood up, shook the audience’s hands and returned to their kits at the same moment and jumped back in on the beat. They are one of the best live acts going right now.

Passion Pit
LIVE 105 couldn’t have booked a better main stage headliner this year. Passion Pit have really blown up this past year with the success of their brilliant sophomore release, Gossamer, which infuses synth-pop with elements of indie rock. At BFD, they played cuts from their debut, but the highlights were the tracks from Gossamer, including “Carried Away,” “It’s not my fault, I’m Happy,” “Cry Like a Ghost” and the breakout single “Take a Walk.” The evening was particularly special for Passion Pit as lead singer Michael Angelakos celebrated his 26th birthday.

DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow’s set at BFD featured obscure and often brand new tracks that he continued to assure the audience they’d probably never heard before. It was a strange, mind-melting juxtaposation of songs, mixed and blended by the iconic Bay Area producer. Every once and a while he’d lower the music and make a comment, like, “Just to let you know, there’s no laptop on stage with me” or “If you’re confused about what’s going on, look at your neighbor and do what they’re doing.” Some of the beats we danceable, others were just weird, slow trance beats, while others were loud, bass-filled outer space soundscapes. He cut songs together so fast, and with so much skill, it was hard to do anything but stare, amazed.

San Jose
This was the year for San Jose at BFD. There were more bands from the South Bay to play BFD than probably any year before with four bands on the Soundcheck Stage and the Limousines on the Subsonic Stage. Over on the Soundcheck stage, the Trims, Anya and the Getdown and Picture Atlantic all played excellent sets, but it was a particular pleasure watching Curious Quail’s set. Their music probably least resembles LIVE 105’s format of all the local bands, but they fought hard to get there with an online vote.

Their excitement of being on stage at Shoreline was palatable, understandably so. Over at Subsonic, the Limousines put on an intense, mostly serious set that, with the exception of two songs, were all tracks off their new album, Hush.

It’s official. South Bay locals Curious Quail have won the last remaining spot on Live 105’s Soundcheck local band stage at BFD 2013. They will share the stage with nine other bay area bands, three of which are also from the South Bay—Picture Atlantic, Anya and the Getdown, and the Trims. Not only did Curious Quail win, but they did so by a sizable margin, earning a whopping 39% of the vote, with twenty bands total in the running.

“We’ve been working really hard as a band to get our name out there; the community support we got was tremendous. Being in a local band working your way up, you have this series of milestones of people taking you seriously. For a while it was the iTunes factor, then it was Spotify, or Pandora. Well, you namedrop Shoreline Amphitheatre as someplace you played and then that person you’ve known for ten years that knows you’re in a band might actually go and listen to your music and enjoy what you’re doing,” says Mike Shirley-Donnelly, lead singer and guitarist for Curious Quail.

Even though every member of Curious Quail worked hard to encourage people to vote for them, their friends and fans it seemed, were excited to help out. Even Dogcatcher, who were also in the running, told their fans to vote for Curious Quail.

“We threw up a few posts on twitter, Facebook and instagram and like everyone shared them. Everyone! It just kept going. One of the pictures had over 60 shares on Facebook and the Facebook “insights” said “11,000 people saw this post”. That’s insanity,” Says Shirley-Donnelly.

The fact that nearly half of the bands playing BFD’s local band stage this year are from the South Bay reflects well on the scene here, especially considering the degree that the rest of the bay area has long since written off any band that hails from San Jose.

“The South Bay has always felt like the bastard child of the bay area when it comes to the music scene, and rightfully so: our 2000’s era metal/hardcore scene that thrived was not something to be proud of. I should know, I was a part of it. Having so many south bay bands not only on the bill already for the local stage, but also in the contest was encouraging. It’s showing that we as a community down here are actually doing something of note,” says Shirley Donnelly

Another South Bay band could be joining locals, Picture Atlantic, Anya and the Getdown and the Trims on the Soundcheck Local Band Stage at BFD this May.

Live 105 has opened up one additional slot, and the San Francisco radio station is letting its listeners vote on who it should fill it. There are 19 bands in the running and six are from the South Bay: 1989 (from Gilroy), Dogcatcher (from Mountain View) and San Jose bands All City Elite, Conversions, Curious Quail and Sweet HayaH.

Voting continues until 3pm on May 3. The winning band will be announced on air at 7pm on May 5th. Visit the voting page for more info.

More info on BFD 2013.

PHOTOS: Images from BFD 2012

Local post-punk rockers the Trims are set to release a new EP, Delete You After, this Friday with a release party at the Blank Club.

While the band has always been known for its late 70s/80s retro alt -rock sound, influenced by bands like Joy Division and early cuts from the Cure, this new EP has a more modern twist, capturing the essence of groups like the Killers, the Rapture and Franz Ferdinand, who themselves were highly influenced by 80s post-punk but with a more dance-rock edge.

The shift is due in part to the band working with producer Steve Murr, who has an impressive resume, including Smashmouth, J.Dash, Young Science and Pounders.

“We felt that we had hit a plateau with our sound as far as recording so we decided to bring in a producer to help shape the songs with an outsider’s perspective,” says lead singer/guitarist Gabe Maciel. “Working with Steve was not work at all, but rather a sharing of ideas with someone who became less of a producer and more of an extended member of the band.”

Some of the key changes that Murr brought to the table was the use of keyboards, which the Trims have never recorded with before, as well as suggesting they speed up their songs. Both of these elements give the songs a stronger dance feel and less of an overt rock sound.

http://youtu.be/TJbCXY_EsVg

Murr also helped the Trims pull off the bigger guitar sound they always wanted. Although they’ve been able to achieve a large sonic wall of guitars in their concerts, they haven’t yet been able to translate that power to their recordings.

“We tracked guitars in a way that would capture that same tone and emotion you would hear live,” says guitarist Bryan Aguirre.

For people who haven’t seen the Trims live in awhile, they’ve added a visual component to the show, putting on coordinated color lightning as they play.

“We feel that the lighting reflects visually what’s going on musically,” Maciel says. “We have always wanted to give people the most bang for their buck. If you come out to see us and pay money, we want to bring an arena style performance to a small club and give our fans a show they deserve and will never forget.”

The Trims play April 26 at the Blank Club at 9pm. Tickets are $8. More info.

Kung Fu Vampire’s video output has been sporadic these past couple years. That’s something he plans to change in a major way by releasing a video for every song on his new album, Love Bites, which came out Halloween last year. He starts things off with his first video for the title track.

Fans were clearly eager for Kung Fu Vampire to start releasing videos again. In only a couple days, he racked up over 6,000 views. The video shows a young vampire boy who’s walking down the street carrying a mysterious box, which mesmerizes all the women he passes. They follow him, hypnotized, concluding with a surprise twist that reveals not only where he’s been walking to, but what is inside the box.

The video was directed by local prolific music video director Frank Door, who has shot videos for K.Flay, the Trims, Northern Son, not to mention the infamous sandwich video for Young Science, which Kung Fu Vampire has a very brief cameo in.