March 19
The Soft Moon w/ Burning Down the Villager
Knickerbockers, 901 O St. in Lincoln
9 p.m., $8, knickerbockers.net
Luis Vasquez began the Soft Moon as a solo project in 2009, quickly churning out post-punk nuggets in the vein of Joy Division, Suicide and Chrome. The heavy synth and hushed vocal sound caught the ears of Captured Tracks, a New York label known for a host of bands recreating widescreen 80s pop sounds on a smaller, bedroom pop scale. The smaller scale works for Soft Moon, as the band’s stark sounds is aided by alternating sense of claustrophobia and alienation. At times, the synths sound cavernously huge, then Vasquez’s buried vocals lurk and the walls of sound seemingly close in. The band’s second album Zeros came out in late 2012 and finds that while Vasquez once again crafted the album mostly by himself, a year and a half of working with a live band as added a greater percussive heft to the songs.