An evening that
could be indie heaven

Music Row
By Brian Rademaekers

On Friday night, the folks at Johnny Brenda’s are putting together the perfect bill showcasing the city’s rich and highly accomplished guard of indie pop rock purveyors.
Sharing the stage are BC Camplight, The Capitol Years, and The Swimmers — three Philly bands who have their own distinct take on pop and promise to make Friday night a pleasure trip through the local indie landscape.
At the top of the night are The Swimmers, whose Fighting Trees album was released early last month. Marking the debut for the four-piece, the Drexel-based Mad Dragon release is a generally joyous one full of sticky-sweet rock pomp and just the right dose of occasional melancholy to balance things out.
Weighing in at 12 tracks, Fighting Trees is a condensed trove of Philly indie pop with ruminations of treks to Lancaster, jangling keys, swirling guitar riffs, and the ethereal vocals of chief songwriter Steve Yutzy-Burkey.
Blending his nostalgic and emotional lyrics with the superb and addictive rock hooks provided by his fellow Swimmers, Yutzy-Burkey has created collection of songs bound to strike a nerve with those who enjoy a little meat with their aesthetics.
When the Capitol Years take the stage, the night will take a temporary detour from extreme pop glory and turn to straight-up indie rock goodness. A true staple of Philly’s rock scene, the Capitol Years are still riding high after 2006’s Dance Away the Terror, and with a few more months of dark days under Bush & Co., we’ll be needing that soundtrack a bit longer too.
The Years also had a recent moment in the spotlight as backers of the legendary Daniel Johnston during his February gig at The Troc. If you missed that show, you can catch live footage on the band’s Web site (www.myspace.com/thecapitolyears) as well as their excellent and dreamy take on Johnston’s True Love Will Find You in the End.
Channeling an updated and amped-up spin of the wondrously sublime Zombies, a Byrds pop sensibility and the cool drone of Beck’s lyrics, the Years are a perfect choice for tomorrow’s bill.
The night will culminate with the appearance of BC Camplight, a band seen around town not all that often.
That scarcity might have something to with BC (as in Philly’s Brian Christinzio) Camplight’s popularity in the United Kingdom, where his upcoming album, Blink of a Nihilist, was initially released last year.
Philly fans haven’t been so lucky, but you can sample a few of the tracks online (www.myspace.com/bccamplight) and, of course, hear them live. Which is what we are recommending here, considering the songs of BC Camplight are significantly awesome.
Stateside, BC Camplight, which for the most part has solely featured the contributions of Christinzio, made waves with the 2005 release of Hide, Run Away.
On that release, fans found a world where the often piano-based songs of BC Camplight conjured greats like Burt Bacharach while still tying in more modern, indie-pop intonations. And while much of BC Camplight’s music shines with a bright and orchestrated sense of pop, darker pathos lies just beneath the surface, with lyrics that delve into mental instability and fear.
Christinzio brings more of that schizophrenic world to light on Blink of a Nihilist, where the lushly composed beauty of his songs is spiked with content culled from interviews at a New Jersey prison and local psychiatric institutions. Not exactly the cheeriest of scenarios, but somehow the magic in BC Camplight works to meld luxuriant harmonies and insanity into an addictive little package.
His preoccupation with madness aside, Christinzio takes things to a new level on his latest tracks and finds balance from backing vocalist Stephanie Vernacchio as well as band members Josh Olmstead and Dave Hartley. ••

Check it out . . .

Who: BC Camplight, The Capitol Years, and The Swimmers
Where: Johnny Brenda’s, Frankford and Girard avenues, Fishtown
When: Friday, April 11, at 9 p.m. Tickets, $8.