Two Tears, The Ettes, The Hall Monitors
When: 8:30 p.m. Tuesday
Where: Black Cat, 1811 14th St. NW
Details: $10; ticketmaster.com
Coco Hames of The Ettes sounds so upbeat and energetic when she’s chatting — almost like a burst of vocal sunshine — one just must ask: Why is there so much blood mentioned in the songs you wrote for the new album “Do You Want Power”?
Sure, the band has a definite punk sound, but it’s more Yeah Yeah Yeahs than Wendy O. Williams, more Go-Gos than The Cramps. What gives?
“In retrospect, I see that,” Coco said. “It is pretty intense. I didn’t really realize until I gave my friends the album and they were like, ‘Are you all right? We are kind of worried about you.’ “
The short answer is yes, Hames is just fine. But what starts as songs that she calls “country played on an acoustic guitar” quickly become the rocking punk sound of The Ettes when bandmates Poni Silver and Jem Cohen chime in musically.
Not that Hames doesn’t take some of the credit for the song’s harder edges. The music, written while the band was on the road over the past year or so, is “a lot of reactive stuff, just emotions to touring, to relationships. It is just frustrating and longing and really hits all the right stuff.”
But if Hames is any indication, this trio that started in New York, formed in Los Angeles and is now traveling the world with its sound is ready to spread some good vibes via this music.
“It’s great we’ll be there, because this tour is sort of short and it’s going to be a very energetic, very enthusiastic tour,” she said. “It’s going to be a great rock ‘n’ roll show.”
The album the band is supporting may have been written over the tour but was recorded in just five days in a “crazy, super-intense” session with producer Greg Cartwright.
It’s slated for September release, and Hames predicts fans will get into it.
“Working with Greg [Cartwright] was amazing because he’s really strong,” Hames said. “I wrote the album really honestly. It was my own little therapy.”
And now that she’s writing new songs for the band’s next release, will her music continue to be so intense?
“I am a little bit happier than I was,” she said. “So it may be a little bit lighter. It’s hard to gauge. … Poni is super-intense and really hard-hitting. And Jem is really inventive musically. I never know what will happen when I write a song and we start playing it.”
