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Local label Drugged Conscience will host a supersparse (yet supertight) showcase at Miami Chum Bucket this Saturday. And the guests of honor will be Olympia, Washington’s Broken Water, a newish trio founded in 2008 that has risen to the top of the Pacific Northwest’s most recent wave of postpunk.
Despite the band hailing from such a seemingly isolated locale, its chops and its hometown’s rich history of punk-related happenings (uh, Nirvana, anyone?) have labels across the country — most notably Night-People in Iowa City and Fan Death in Baltimore, two major players in the contemporary world of weird/other boutique releases — throwing themselves at the threesome’s feet.
Broken Water also made the cover of Maximumrocknroll, which is a statement of that publication’s recently relaxed standards of punk purity as well as a nod to the band’s accessibility to a broad listening audience. And comparable to fellow Olympia crew Gun Outfit, which played Churchill’s last summer, Broken Water peddles subtle rock music that incorporates the herky-jerky song structures of SST-style postpunk, the ethereal jangle of ’90s shoegaze acts such as Black Tambourine (or even the almighty Sonic Youth), and the occasional grunge bummer dirge designed to get heads not quite banging but definitely bobbing.
