30

THURSDAY

In the mid-’90s, my brother lived in Atlanta, and nobody was a bigger booster of the city’s charms. The burritos were the cheapest and the best ever. The record stores had every Monk LP you could ever need. And Hotlanta had the Purkinje Shift, a math-as-hell group that my brother never failed to worship from the front row, no matter what basement they chose to hammer in odd time. His preachin’ led me to buy the band’s first album twice. Now Atlanta’s dorms have produced a crazy-ass cousin to the Shift: the Blame Game. This quartet drinks from a spacier moonshine still. Guitars wring out longer notes, augmented by syrupy slide, sax honks, and reverbed vocals. (Is it too obvious to say that the drummer never stops?) On the band’s new album, Honey and Salt, the songs can gut-punch but just as easily stop to flutter, pecking and scraping toward a sweaty beauty. (And yes, the drummer is amazing.) The Blame Game plays with Ampere, Death to Tyrants, This Ghost Town, and Yelp of Sords at 8:30 p.m. at the Warehouse Next Door, 1017 7th St. NW. $7. (202) 783-3933.