Saturday, June 21st at The EARL
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
SMALL, Wieuca, Made Up, Oceaneater
Doors at 8:00pm / $15 / 21+

Thursday, June 26th at The Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Kid Fears, Will Orchard, Knelt
Doors at 8:00pm / $15 / 21+

Saturday, June 28th at The Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Wes Parker, Recess Club, Buckhead Shaman
Doors at 9:00pm / $15 / 21+

Wes Parker is a Richmond, Virginia-based musician and comedian known for blending vulnerability with sharp humor. A former member of Camp Howard, he gained national attention with his viral comedy persona Skunk before stepping into his solo music career. His debut EP Splinter showcases a mix of ‘90s rock, folk, and country influences, drawing comparisons to Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, and early Muse. Whether through music or comedy, he captivates audiences with raw honesty and a distinctive voice.

Friday, July 18th at Aisle 5
Speakeasy, VLSC, & Nobody’s Booking present…
Vegyn, Loukeman, amr*
Doors at 9:00pm / $25 - $30 / All Ages

Vegyn’s shape-shifting musical output as a solo artist has so far tended to fall into extremes. The 30-year-old producer – real name Joseph Thornalley – is partly known for his excess, working tirelessly with some of the world’s biggest rap and R&B artists, and unleashing mixtapes of upwards of 70 tracks, letting light into his creative process by sharing reams of creative ideas and scraps from the cutting room floor. By contrast, his ebullient 2019 debut album Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds was an exercise in precision, or as Joe puts it, “trying to cut this thing into a super-sharp point”. But, as he worked towards his sophomore album, Joe found that he needed to break out of his old patterns. He made what he describes as “a couple sub par efforts” – records that will never see the light of day – before arriving at the ease, effortlessness, and song-driven approach that underpins his emotionally rich second LP, The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions. On this album, there are neither endlessly refined sonics, nor sprawling, open-ended ideas. Instead, there are sublimely crafted songs, each allowing for a dose of human imperfection, each wobbling on a tightrope between elation and an eerie melancholia. In contrast to the technical prowess of his debut, Vegyn’s second album emerged from a space of free-flowing experimentation. Often travelling as part of his work as a producer and label boss (of PLZ Make It Ruins), Joe wrote the new songs across studios, living rooms, and hotel rooms worldwide. “Some sessions were a deep dive into new – to me – analogue hardware, from the comfort of my home,” he explains, “and others were back-to-basics, laptop-only sessions in a hotel room in south east Asia.” He also wrote some songs at the piano, which he’s been playing for around five years. “I still don’t really know what a real chord is,” he says, “but by just experimenting consistently, I’ve started to develop my own way of expressing what it is I’m looking for. I just try to look for the emotional resonance.” Likewise, on this record he spent a lot of time playing around on the guitar, which he says makes him “feel like a baby”. Production was less involved this time around, with his trademark flourishes and BPM changes taking a backseat to the melody and song structure. “I’m just trying to make interesting songs. There wasn’t too much thought – feeling was the focus.” Still, there are plenty of the uncanny and darkly funny moments that make a Vegyn record recognisable. Most notably, there are the spoof radio station drops that happen periodically throughout the record, announcing eerie non-sequiturs like “hellbent on compromise” or “same old, same old”. Each one gives the record a distinctly Vegyn feel. “I think the thing that’s pertinent through all my work is a sort of happy melancholia,” Joe reflects. “It’s like, you’ve finally gotten to ‘acceptance’ in the stages of grief.” In his music, while much of it has a bouncy, euphoric rush, Joe rejects toxic positivity: it’s okay to be sad, he emphasises. “In the past, music was perhaps the only time I’d let my guard down and express myself.” The title, like all Vegyn titles, has a ring of ambiguity to it. Joe became intrigued by the common phrase when he started contemplating what it actually means: “Is it like, ‘by doing the right thing, you actually make more problems’? Or is that ‘the idea in your mind of doing good serves no purpose – you have to actually do it’?” Whatever it means, he muses, it’s a phrase that captures the split between intentions and actions. For him, during the period of time in which he was writing these happy-melancholic songs, that theme resonated. The record, Joe says, reflects a kind of “stuck-ness. I felt so lost, and frustrated, and confused about what exactly it was that I was trying to do as an artist.” That lost sensibility comes through in the music, though it’s not all bleak (“there’s some fun to be had in disassociating,” Joe grins). Take “Halo Flip”, a restless, shuffling declaration of unconditional love, with echoes of grunge. “Even when you disappear, you know that you can come right back,” sings Lauren Auder, over a rush of strings and cymbals. It’s a warm hug of a song, looping its offer of solace and comfort – and yet, there’s a ragged, tired edge to its optimism. On its flipside is “In The Front”, a elegiac track that features a monologue from London artist John Glacier over a bed of mournful, occasionally discordant strings. “The tears that I hide still filling up with steam/ Hot head, but they’re never gonna see it,” John intones, deadpan and steadfast about masking her real emotions. The song’s outro draws a parallel between laughing and crying: two extremes that occupy different sides of the same coin. On The Road To Hell…, all emotions have this murky mercuriality, with happiness easily sliding into an underbelly of sadness, and moments of regret bouyed by hope. The record is peppered with the voices of experimental contemporaries, including the British singer-songwriter Ethan P. Flynn, avant-garde producer Loraine James, and grunge duo Double Virgo. “I like working with other people as it’s the best way to let each other’s strengths shine through,” reflects Joe. “You get to sit back and think a little bit more objectively about what someone else might want, and that can greatly help to solidify what it is you want, too.” These collaborations, and rediscovering a sense of freedom and playfulness in music, helped Joe create his most cohesive body of work, and most accomplished songwriting, to date. “I used to think that important songs were the ones you toiled over for months and months, changing nothing,” Joe says. “In reality, it’s always the songs that took like, an hour from start to finish. The ones that are effortless.” He points to the famous quote from David Lynch’s book about transcendental meditation: that “ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper”. For Joe, this meant wading into previously unexplored reserves of emotional honesty, following his instincts, and learning to let go of striving for technical perfection. Next on his list is a live show, something that he’s always been anxious about putting together in the past. “I’m trying to turn to new challenges,” he explains. “What I’ve realised is that you have to put yourself in positions of difficulty, in order to grow.”

RIYL Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Air, George Clanton, James K, Boards of Canada

Loukeman is a Toronto-based producer, DJ, and songwriter. His music pulls from folk, pop, rap, and R&B songs into warped yet familiar forms. His latest album, Sd-2 — the second of a planned trilogy- continues to display his range as one of the most exciting producers in recent years. With a forthcoming album in 2025, he's also caught the attention of several pop acts as a producer and co-writer. He has had recent placements with Apple, Nike, and Burberry.

Saturday, July 19th at The Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Dustbowlchampion, Casket Cassette, Floats
Doors at 9:00pm / $15 / 21+

Sunday, July 20th at The Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Future Crib, Zoe Bayani
Doors at 7:00pm / $15 / 21+

Future Crib is a non-fiction rock band from Nashville, Tennessee. It’s Johnny, Bryce, Julia, & George atop a horse that won't stop walking. Future Crib plays shows your dad will respect and your little sister will understand. They tell the truth, and they work together. For 6 years, 3 albums, and hundreds of shows, they’ve been a fully collaborative band. After the departure of their original drummer and contributing songwriter Noah Pope in 2022, Future Crib turned inward. Rather than replace him, they rearranged their songs and sound amongst the four of them, establishing a new foundation for their progressive richness. When they took that perspective into the studio, not realizing how much they’d learned, they performed a miracle. Future Crib’s forthcoming record, Impossible Songs, testifies the ethos of the pure-hearted, truth-loving ensemble. The band has always recorded their albums live to tape. This time, they followed their analog intuition to its natural end, using no computers and transporting tapes by hand (in automobile) between each stage of the process. Their intention offers a chance to align with a side: Those who fight the machines that steal our minds by mastering simple machines that can expand them. It's a reminder that you can fight what you hate by following your heart – If you ever need help remembering that something can be real, Future Crib’s earnest pursuit is here to assist you in yours.

-Sam Hearn, with the blessing of the band

Friday, July 25th at The Drunken Unicorn
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Worlds Worst, Shallowater, Los Gargoyles
Doors at 7:00pm / $15 - $18 / 21+

Born where the dustbowl never died, Shallowater sonically animates the bleak, gritty landscape of West Texas. Their debut album, "There Is A Well," was released last year to high acclaim with its masterful use of slowcore, post-hardcore, and country. Between deeply sad ballads and hard-hitting distortion, Shallowater's music pushes the boundaries of conventional genres to create their own Americana: a dark, barren soundscape of their home, a Cormac McCarthy novel brought to life."

Wednesday, August 20th, 2025

Speakeasy & Nobody’s Booking present…

Kairos Creature Club, Dinner Time, Johnny Falloon

Drunken Unicorn

8pm/$15/21+

Kairos Creature Club (KCC) is a new project from Lena Simon (La Luz) and Glenn Van Dyke (BOYTOY). After years of playing in bands confined by genre, Van Dyke and Simon founded KCC definitively as an exploration of music. As an ever-evolving project, KCC is fueled by collaboration, the duo seeking out individuals who are moved by the moment, and subsequently capturing the minutiae when different combinations of artistry and creativity collide.

RIYL Frankie and the Witch Fingers, King Gizzard, Crumb, GOAT

Friday, October 3rd at Aisle 5
Nobody’s Booking Presents...
Pile with NNAMDÏ and Monsoon
Doors at 7:00pm / $20 / All Ages

“I want to do what makes me feel like a kid: experimenting, having fun, and trying to discover new things about this work,” says Pile’s Rick Maguire about All Fiction. It’s his band’s eighth record, and one that finds the ambitious group assembling its most texturally complex material yet—despite the fraught inspiration underscoring its restive lyrics. Alongside the blistering drums and scorched-earth riffs that first galvanized Pile’s dedicated fanbase, the band has incorporated elegiac strings, mystifying vocal corrosions, and haunting synths. From the creeping fear of cinematic opener “It Comes Closer” to the euphorically ascending keys on ego-shattering closer “Neon Gray,” All Fiction is an ornate, carefully paced study on the subjectivity of perception, the data-shaping despotism of big tech, and the connections between anxiety and death. In its most vital moments, it’s also a resolute recommitment to the restorative significance of art and imagination.

For fifteen years, Pile’s evolving take on rock has earned the group one oft-repeated superlative: “your favorite band’s favorite band.” Ceaseless touring took its members from Boston’s basement circuit to international festivals, hitting loftier technical apexes with each new record. Maguire—the fastidious composer, evocative guitarist, and potent voice behind the solo-turned-punk project—gives musical body to his interior world in scream-along-able lyrics that skew surreal. Drummer Kris Kuss’s time-defying performances, layered over gnarled basslines, have garnered widespread acclaim. 2019’s Green and Gray took Pile’s thunderous noise to more intricate realms, thanks to new recruit Alex Molini’s work on bass and keyboards, and Chappy Hull’s dextrous interplay on second guitar. That record drew praise for its political directness and instrumental ferocity, but Pile’s seventh album was almost a wholly different endeavor—one on which Maguire would favor piano.

“I’ve been trying to get out of what I think is ‘the rock band format,’ and I was also tired of what I saw as our identity as a band,” explains Maguire, citing the profound impact he’s drawn from Mt. Eerie’s unusual timbres, Kate Bush’s ambitious singularity, and Aphex Twin’s irreplicable soundscapes. “The confusion about identity combined with existential anxiety led to exploring my imagination as a means of escape.” As far back as 2017, Maguire’s songwriting gravitated toward more obtuse influences, with a Prophet X synthesizer eventually replacing guitar as his primary composing tool. But when Pile’s lineup changed after his move to Nashville, Maguire was hesitant to stray far from the band’s established heavy sound, lest his newer bandmates take critical heat. Squirreling away that material for a later record afforded him time to explore deliberately. “I’ve been more drawn to recordings where it’s difficult to identify what’s happening,” offers Maguire of the albums that impacted All Fiction; the list is vast, touching on adventuresome heavy-hitters like Portishead, Broadcast, Penderecki and Tinariwen. “I also wanted to use different instruments and recording techniques to highlight the songs, rather than creating the visual of a band performing them,” he says.

All Fiction—a reference to “the lack of any objective reality,” and the worries that accompany parsing truth from tale—is a record Maguire views in some ways as Pile’s most vulnerable, despite his embrace of symbolic lyricism. In 2019, Maguire and Molini began demoing All Fiction in Nashville; Molini, an established producer, brought appreciated focus to the process. As the pandemic interrupted Pile’s planned touring, Maguire leveled up at production to accommodate his fascination with electronic textures. On 2021’s Songs Known Together, Alone, he rearranged Pile’s back catalog for solo performance. Later that year, improvisational record In the Corners of a Sphere-Filled Room empowered the group to push deeper into orchestrated strangeness. In September 2021, Molini and Maguire were joined by Kuss—who was living eighteen hours away in Boston—for a month-long rehearsal of the twenty songs in contention. Kuss’s versatility gave him insight into synth patterns and atypical percussion choices like rhythmic breathing. The band, now a three-piece after the departure of Hull, recorded at home until they’d gotten All Fiction right, then they headed into the studio proper to try it all again. Recording once more with engineer Kevin McMahon (Real Estate, Titus Andronicus) at Marcata Recording in upstate New York, Pile tracked fifteen songs for over a month—the project’s longest studio stint by far. A “mammoth period” of synths, resonant vocal re-processing, and nightly full band overdubs yielded layers like doubled drums, warped classical guitars, and triggered samples of air ducts. Finally, Pile was joined by a string quartet, adding magical last touches. It marked a triumphant chapter for Maguire: “Part of it felt like pulling out all the stops,” he says. “I never really treated a Pile record that way.”

For a record intended to abdicate rock’s throne, several of the ten tracks finally chosen for All Fiction number among Pile’s rockingest. “Loops” finds Maguire questioning his motives as a songwriter, scrutinizing the border between his lived experiences and the stressors he sings about. Concerns about self-awareness, substance use, and music’s environmental impact infected “Poisons,” which takes cues from the loud-quiet splendor of PJ Harvey. A trip to Big Bend in Texas inspired the Lynchian “Nude with a Suitcase”; “I really like Kris’ breaths, and what Alex did on the Rhodes and Omnichord. It added textures that give this song a lot of life,” Maguire effuses. While global perspectives and personal moments shaped the record’s narrative arc—climate injustice, the addiction crisis, American cultism, and capitalistic overwork, to name a few subjects—Maguire says he’s more confident than ever in letting poignant images speak for themselves: “If this combination of words does it for me, it doesn’t need to make sense to somebody else.”

After completing past records, Pile’s had goals bubbling on the backburner. Maguire poured all of those and then some into All Fiction, and this purity of intention unlocked a refreshed sense of joy and fulfillment in Pile’s music. “I like thinking art has the capacity to change things and the way people function. But the means to get that art out there and get people to connect to it can be draining—and I overcommitted, in a lot of cases, to trying to be an island,” Maguire admits. All Fiction was sparked by a beguiling sonic palette, but it’s also infused with love from the years of trust between Kuss, Molini, and Maguire. Proof’s in the aftermath: though they spent five years as a long distance project, post-All Fiction, all three members of Pile are once again living in the Northeast.

Tuesday, November 4th at Masquerade (Hell)
Speakeasy & Nobody’s Booking Present...
French Police and Social Order
Doors at 7:00pm / $20 - $25 / All Ages

Formed in Chicago, French Police is a darkwave ensemble led by vocalist and guitarist Brian Flores, lead guitarist Manny Herrera, and bassist Rolando Donjuan. Since 2019, their music has encapsulated indie and post-punk audiences with rhythmic guitar & synths, proving to be melancholic dance music for the passionate and romantic.

RIYL: Interpol, Twin Tribes, Blood Club, Forever Grey, The Cure, DIIV