Images: toyGuitar, Eliza Battle, Brendan Scholz June 24, 2015 at Beauty Bar

“We’re going to keep this going fast!” exclaimed toyGuitar frontman Jack Dalrymple at the start of his band’s 13 song set at the Beauty Bar. And fast they did, tearing through their set and finishing before midnight. Can every weekday show be like this? Fast, fun and punctual – the mark of a good night when you’re over 30.

Dalrymple is one of my all-time favorite musicians and since it’s been close to a decade since I’ve heard him sing live (I was at a wedding during their 2014 PRB performance), I couldn’t have been more excited to see his latest band.

And it was clear from looking around the smokey bar that I was not alone in my admiration of his music. All the bands of Jack’s career were represented on the shirts of the few dozen fans that made it out on a Wednesday night.

Dead to Me? Yep. One Man Army? Of course! Swingin’ Utters? You know it. Re-Volts? Well, no Re-Volts, but you get the picture. (I want a new Re-Volts album, damnit!) Dalrymple seemed very humbled by the love and spent most of his time not on stage chatting with fans.

Now if you haven’t listened to toyGuitar, picture One Man Army meeting The Stooges while bonding over The Clash. These songs have swagger, particularly the raucous and rowdy “She’s An Alarm” and “Human Hyenas,” – guitarist Miles Peck’s  and bassist Paul Oxborrow’s howls on the latter caused at least a few fans to pump fists in the air and a few more to bust out their best drunken Wednesday dance moves.

The songs are straightforward – they rock without frills. And their live performance is from the same mold. The band had no time for banter, only addressing the audience to call out a drunken party going on in the bar’s photo booth, to thank us all for coming out, and for drummer Rosie Gonce to indulge one fan’s request for the world’s shortest solo.

ToyGuitar sounded extremely tight – you could probably put on the record and they’d match it note for note. And they did a great job sequencing their set. Every time things slowed down, like for breezy ballad “Roller Coasters,” they picked things right back up with rockers like “Loose in a Room.” The pacing provided a nice opportunity to rest one’s neck before getting back to uninhibited head banging. Again – over 30 years old here.

Playing just a few minutes before toyGuitar was Vegas’ own Eliza Battle, who thrashed about the tiny inside stage with as much intensity as they displayed during their much larger Punk Rock Bowling set a month earlier. “Cheers to That” was an obvious Beauty Bar favorite and with a line like “”Hell, there’s drinking to do!” how could you be surprised?

Fellow PRB alum Brendan Scholz of Mercy Music was up first and this time, he gave his songs the Billy Bragg touch by playing solo on an electric, not an acoustic. “Tempos don’t matter when you’re playing by yourself” exclaimed Scholz and that was evident by a more relaxed take on “It’s a Choice,” a fantastic cover of Paul Westerberg’s “Wonderful Lie” and a last minute request for “Pretend.”

-Emily Matview

Photos by Aaron Mattern | https://www.flickr.com/photos/akmofoto/