Chalaxy Trips Out at the Beast

With New Year’s Eve firmly behind us, The Spin set to make good on one of our resolutions for 2016. The one about not getting overly to’ up at FooBar — that one’s dead in the water. But we can still accomplish the one about catching more local music that escaped our radar in 2015. And we're getting that effort underway with Chalaxy, the magically mysterious psychedelic quintuplet that celebrated the release of its debut record, Pronoia, at The Basement East on Friday.

Though we missed the AC/DC cover band that opened the show (to the surprise of most involved in the gig), we did catch the end of Dead Cures. Reformulated from the ashes of Kink Ador, Dead Cures sound … well, like Kink Ador. Punchier and more straight-ahead, but unmistakably rooted in the pop sound that members Sharon Koltick, Michael Kisak and Evan Buchanan spent years stewing on. We are intrigued by what Dead Cures are doing here, though, and appreciate the band’s sound stripped down into its most basic components.

Speaking of stripped down, Lauren Strange and the Pretty Killers were up next with a take on the ‘90s alt-rock approach to punk trios. Bantering with the sound guy before their set, Strange quipped that she wanted to “take [the crowd] to Washington.” While not quite channeling the abrasive destructiveness of Bikini Kill or raggedy whirlwind of Sleater-Kinney in their heyday, Strange did nail the more radio-friendly pop-rock zone occupied by grunge-lite bands like Letters to Cleo. While fine, their set came off feeling a little restrained, a little too polished for the kind of grungy influences they were wearing on their collective sleeve.

After a couple of cocktails at The Beast's recently opened drinker's annex The Pub — which, located on the back side of the club, was still unknown enough to be practically dead, despite the dozens-deep scrum of smokers on the patio — it was time for Chalaxy. In our absence, the band had set up a handful of multicolored triangles (because why not?) and fired up a projector that covered the stage in a swirling kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. Trippy! But not as trippy as singer Taylor Cole appearing onstage wearing full-scale angel wings while a woman in a spandex Robin costume dumped balloons on an awaiting crowd.

That’s the kind of thing that drew us to Chalaxy in the first place: The band has no illusions about the kind of show they’re putting on, taking liberal direction from glam rock’s forefathers. Cole is clearly modeling himself after Ziggy Stardust, which made this record release party feel like a backdoor birthday celebration for Bowie himself. Not to mention, on a more somber note, a fitting tribute for a man whose untimely passing on Sunday  sent the music fans into worldwide mourning this week.

After shedding the angel wings, Cole and his bandmates dove headlong into thumping grooves, while hanging their hats on wall-of-sound guitar lines that drive the band’s songs into interstellar psychedelia territory, but without the self-indulgent noodling that so often seems part and parcel to psych revival. You know how you get bored after the Flaming Lips enter minute seven of Wayne Coyne’s fever dream come to life? Chalaxy avoids that entirely, instead offering up psychedelic sounds you can dance to. How about that?

As a chorus of popping balloons and bartenders printing out tab receipts filled the club, Justin Kalk found himself in the unenviable position of playing after the headliners. Kalk wheedled his way from guitar solo to guitar solo admirably, but how do you follow a dude in angel wings flinging confetti around and crawling into the crowd?