Tuesday: Love Culture @ Skully’s

It seems as if there was any band made for the MySpace (or Hot Topic – if they had one) record label, it would be Love Culture, our very own shoegazer-obsessed, Smashing Pumpkins/Kill Hannah-influenced band of pseudo-goths.

Aquamarine, the seven-song EP released in January and available to download for FREE, is not something you’d typically expect to come out of the Columbus music scene. In a city that is recognized by national press for it’s lo-fi/shitgaze sound, Love Culture in the antithesis of what we’ve allowed to pass as “good” music for the past decade which means, of course, they stand no chance unless they move to a more supportive city like Chicago, L.A., or New York.

Though I’ve yet to catch Love Culture live, I suspect a lot of time and thought is put into the presentation of the music – everything from the lighting to the clothes that are worn are planned out in advance to create the most memorable experience for those who pay a cover charge. At least that’s the impression the music gives – it’s polished and radio-ready although given an actual major label recording budget, Love Culture has the potential to create something truly epic. As it stands, Aquamarine hits all of my right buttons (I hear everything from BRMC to Silversun Pickups to the aforementioned Smashing Pumpkins and Kill Hannah in their sound) and is one of my favorite local releases of the last 10 years.

Hell, even the band member’s names sound like those of rock stars – Tristan Swan (vocals/guitar), Raleigh Swan (guitar/keys), James Levesque (guitars/keys), Sky Cunningham (bass), Robert Fisher (drums).

Catch Love Culture, Main St. Gospel, Wolf Ram Heart, and Alert New London at Skully’s, March 9. Admission is free.

19 responses to “Tuesday: Love Culture @ Skully’s

  1. I just had a heart attack. Shoegaze getting press, bizarre.

  2. Wow this is pretty awesome stuff. Why have I not heard of these guys before? They’re really local?

  3. Carl Howard

    They are local. Some of us have even lived with some of them.
    Watch closely as they pay their City of Columbus axes using the standard Shoegazer exemption!

  4. …TAXES, not god damn axes. I really must remember to set my keyboard on fire today.

  5. Go see them, have played with them several times, good shtuff.

  6. Tristan is so hott, OMG I would tots jump his bones in a heart beat.
    LOVE CULTURE ROX!

  7. I saw Caleb at andymans and he felt up my friend tom bulter

  8. Odlicno! Pozdrav od Dusice

  9. Oops, read this post too late or I would’ve gone!
    Thanks for the Kill Hannah reference. :)

  10. Dweezil Zappa

    I saw love culture a while back. The bigger swan, Tristan I think it was insisted on polishing my Nazi war ration collection, all the while obsessing over some cat that had eaten a piece of the earths crust & had all the sudden, from surely some sort of god being black, he whispered into my ear that hot topic is the most influential store of the counter culture & he dreamed of eating cottage cheese atop a mountain of dead grizlies & broken phones. Tristan, sky… Thanks for the blast past eighty second year tarp coupon flirt fog. There was an Indian man in your show screaming something about crusading toilet training. All in all as you can see, best album ever. Jimi Hendrix’s parents would have simply aborted had they heard this masterpiece of masterpieces. Even god can go to sleep, they got this.

  11. You dated Molly Ringwald. You’ve got nothing on me.

  12. y’know…
    despite what many may wish to assume… the vast majority of everyone i know in columbus is into shoegaze to a fairly large extent.
    ask around.
    just because there haven’t been any bands in town to play it (since emerald down in the early 00s) doesn’t mean that its marginalized.
    yawn.

    ps – the reason their names sound like rock star names is that they almost all assumed names.

    pps – i think that they as a band show a lot of promise — so don’t take this as hatin’ just a critique of a bad blurb.

    • Dweezil Zappa

      Well put kind sir. Shoegaze, who actually wants to say they are in a shoegaze band, how’s about “standstill sub pop” or “no moving be bopiditity hardbore rock n roll”

  13. “They almost all assumed names”……Nope.

  14. two outta five ‘aint bad.

  15. Switch one first name with one middle name and you’ll have it. That’s the extent of it.

  16. Only one of them has changed their name. A first name, and it would have sounded as much a rock star if it wasn’t changed.
    He changed it before he started this band.