Local H -- Bell House, Brooklyn, Oct. 18, 2012

By Kara Sprague

Some 20 years or go ago, one could be living in almost any large or even medium-to-small sized market and have a radio station playing some form of alternative music.
It emerged from what was called "College radio" in the '80s and produced its share of one-hit wonders. These are the acts who showed up on various compilations  years later, the kind who'll be on the inevitable "Time-Life '90s collection" before long
Some of those acts fell off the radar and called it a day -- Belly, Semisonic,  Spacehog, etc.
Some artists surfaced in more decidedly non-alternative settings. Letters to Cleo's Kay Hanley worked with Miley Cyrus. Semisonic's Dan Wilson picked up a Grammy for co-writing Adele's omnipresent "Someone Like You" and is now working with Engelbert Humperdinck (I am NOT making up the latter, either)..
But under the radar, some bands have not only kept doing, but have done their best material long after  achieving "Buzz Bin" status. Nada Surf's moved past the uber-Weezerish hit "Popular" to produce years worth of good-to-great-to uniformly excellent mature power pop.
Then there's Local H. The Illinois-based rockers hit in 1996 with "Bound for the Floor", the track your less-knowledgeable friends probably refer to as "that Copacetic song." They were poised to build off the success of that track and the "As Good as Dead" album that spawned it with the excellent follow-up "Pack Up the Cats."
Unfortunately, that was the exact moment the band plunged down the rabbit hole of Major Label Hell, as the album got lost in the shuffle as their label was swallowed up by another.
After that,  Local H disappeared from Major Label Land (a place more populated by metrosexual male singers and overly sexualized female singers of possibly legal age and autotuned bastardizations of hip-hop these days), it has soldiered on with a particularly strong run of music, especially beginning with 2003's "No Fun" EP.
The latest is the just-released "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum", another fine example of frontman Scott Lucas' abilty to craft a record around a common theme without concept-album filler. In this case, "Hallelujah" is an intelligent, pointed album on the state of politics in America circa 2012.
Thursday night's show was a triple bill that was more or less a double bill. Lucas, as he has on some other shows on the current tour, opened up sans drummer Brian St. Clair.  Just Lucas, an acoustic guitar and a mixed set of tunes -- a cover of the Misfits' "Last Caress" (in the same manner as it appeared on one of the band's EPs, four songs from Lucas' rootsier Married Men and a couple  Local H songs.
Even though the Bell House was, to put it mildly, filled less-than-capacity at this point, Lucas performed energetically, string breakage be damned. He was in fine voice and proved that he can do just as well without the heavy rock. Although he does very well in that setting. More on that later.
Next up was The Life and Times, the band that's been around off-and-on longer than singer/guitarist Allen Epley's previous band, the vastly underrated Shiner.
Epley felt the need to remark  about the smattering of applause the band was getting a couple songs into the set. "Wow, hope you guys make more noise for Local H when they come on," he complained.
Perhaps he should have spent more time making sure the set began better, as the band  opened with a rather meh "jam" in which one spends time waiting for the proper song to kick on and take off, only it never, ever does.
This is not to say Life and Times were bad. Far from it. The band is a tight unit and its performance picked up steam as it went on, even if it never quite won over the audience it had a chance to initially.
Plus, with Epley's voice often being a ringer for Ken Andrews and the band's musical flavoring offering more than a bit of Andrews' classic '90s band, Failure, it's not like it's not in one of my wheelhouses.
It certainly does this type of music better than, say, Andrews himself did with the band Year of the Rabbit. With Andrews more in the background side of the music industry these days, someone has to carry the torch.
But then, if there's a band that can still carry the torch for itself these days, it's Local H.
It's 2005 live album was sardonically titled "Local H Comes Alive." A more accurate, though less sardonic title might well be "Now That's a Rock and Roll Show, Goddammit!", because the band still brings the goods.
The goods delivery even takes place on a night in a club in Brooklyn with around 100 or so people, maybe up to half of the Bell House's Capacity.
While the crowd might have been small, it was full of people who clearly wanted to be there. In five boroughs with plenty of entertainment options -- musical and otherwise -- it was clear that the fans were ready to be entertained and that they were fans. Voices could be heard singing along not just with the familiar '90s favorites, but with the songs off "Hallelujah", released a month earlier.
The band's 21-song set touched on pretty much all the bases.While a few of the missing-in-setlist "No Fun"  EPs tracks are among my all-time favorites from the band, with an available songlist as strong as Local H's, some good ones are bound not to be played on a given night.
It featured a healthy dose of the new record, a good thing when that record's as strong as "Hallelujah", arguably its best post-major release.
While the 40-something Lucas can still bounce around the stage like someone half his age, it doesn't hurt that he still has Brian St. Clair (Dave Grohl without the name recognition) more than capably manning the drum kit.
St. Clair supplied a heavy, dexterous attack that was heavy without being overly hammy.
The band ripped through three songs from the new album, "Waves", "Cold Manor" and "Here Come Old Laptop" before getting the obligatory, but not perfunctory rip through "Bound for the Floor" out of the way.
With the hit out of the way, it was time to mix up the setlist the rest of the night, starting with a stomping version of "They Saved Reagan's Brain", a catchy stomper that's one of the highlights on "Hallelujah."
It made a nice 1-2 punch with a cracking run through "The One With 'Kid', arguably the best song off the 'breakup' album "12 Angry Months,"
Clearly, the newer material (including "Feed a Fever", a song Christopher Walken's record producer Bruce Dickinson would be proud of) and hold its own with the band's more classic songs. Lucas has thrown in enough little different musical flavorings and lyrical ideas to keep things fresh while still unmistakably being Local H. It also doesn't hurt that Lucas, while never a slouch as a guitar player, has improved over the years as well.
With a healthy dose of the new album out of the way, the band was ready to tear through more of the older fan favorites -- "All Right, Oh Yeah" and the sardonic "All the Kids Are Right" (the shoulda-been-a-hit) off "Pack Up the Cats", "Fritz's Corner" off "As Good As Dead" and "Hands on the Bible" from the post-'Cats album "Here Comes the Zoo."
That led to the the callback track that closes "Hallelujah", "Waves Again." Definitely on the short list of highlights from the album, it closed the main set on a high note.
There would be no en masse chant of "encore", because it wasn't needed. Lucas left his guitar plugged in, noise still coming out as he walked off.
Sure enough, the two were back onstage soon enough, as the feedback stopped and the band started with "California Songs", the funny track of "Whatever Happened to PJ Soles" that shows off Lucas' knack for being amusing with straining too hard to be clever.
One more new song, "Look Who's Walking on Four Legs Again" followed. Then  familiar stomp and feedback of "High-Fiving MF", the song that's closed more of the band's sets than any other, kicked in. The band rocked through it. The crowd didn't miss its sing-along cues and the evening was ready to close...
...Except the band had one more song up its sleeve, a cover of TV on the Radio's "Wolf Like Me" that Lucas and St. Clair ripped through with energy as if it were the first song of the night, not the 21st.
The size of the venue and the crowd were well below what a band like Local H deserves at this point in its career, one of the great Rock Injustices, to be sure.
But its testament to Local H's musicianship, song craft and midwestern work ethic that it didn't matter. In all the times, I've seen them, words like "perfunctory" or "half-assed" never had occasion to come up. When you have new songs this good and a back catalog so deep with quality material, it's hard to go wrong.
Though too many mainstream rock fans and what's left of major labels these days have their heads wedged deep in between their backsides in a case of possibly terminal cranial rectosis, that's on them.
Local H is one of the best rock bands they're missing. And if they weren't at the Bell House, shame on them, they missed a damn good rock show.