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21
TUESDAY
Huh, whaddya know: The Czars—and not, say, Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great—are now the top Google hit for that phrase. Maybe now they’ll get the attention they deserve. It seems like only yesterday that the band was a hidden gem, obscure enough that a mention of it during my interview at this very paper afforded me the cred to stay in the running. Or so I like to think. But what have the Czars done for me lately? The Denver outfit’s 2004 album Goodbye is slated for rerelease next month on label Bella Union. And if you’ve noticed that I haven’t yet coughed up a genre-label modifier, that’s because Goodbye is as unpredictable as everything else that the eternally blue John Grant & Co. have put out so far. The Czars play no particular type of music, sounding like everyone else and no one else at the same time, and as they traipse and trip from alt-country to electronica to cabaret to pop, the music’s only threads are varying levels of depression and always-inspired instrumentation. Indeed, the Czars’ most predictable move was calling their first self-release Moodswing. The Czars appear with Paul Michel and the Echoes at 9:30 p.m. at DC9, 1940 9th St. NW. $8. (202) 483-5000. (Anne Marson)