Photo by Shawn Backbill 

“What the fuck is this?” That’s what I was thinking the first time I saw Antelope play last summer. All of their songs sounded very similar and consisted of two or three chords and the same phrases repeated over and over, which were mostly about demons and ghosts. Now, a year has passed and they are one of my favorite bands. In a year’s time I’ve grown to appreciate what they were doing which is emphasizing minimalism. Yes, the music is very simple and down right repetitious but I find that pretty appealing considering that many popular bands are so loaded with over the top guitars and complicated lyrics.

They put on a great show yesterday at Fort Reno. Singer/guitarist Justin Moyer is especially entertaining to watch. During the song “The Demon” Moyer put his guitar down and started moving his hands like a spoken word artist would while ennunicating each lyric precisely. While he was doing that I was thinking about how he might act when he is performs in drag as his one man band Edie Sedgwick at Fort Reno on August 16th. In addition to being Antelope and Edie Segdwick, Moyer has been in a couple of other great bands like El Guapo and Supersystem and he evens keeps a blog for D.C.’s Citypaper called Iceland.

Click here to see the remaining dates for Fort Reno’s concert series.

Below is a video of Antelope’s song “The Flock” filmed at Fort Reno in 2003.

Antelope’s Myspace
Promo photo by Shawn Backbill

Tags: antelope, mp3, show review //