(All photos by Nicole Berlin Photography)
If anyone walked into the July 28 show at Far Out Lounge unfamiliar with the nascent work of top-billed Mikky & the Doom, they got a strongly representative taste of it before the band even started.
During sound checks, while calibrating her vocals a cappella, Mikky Rib bellowed the chorus of the most eye-opening of the band’s handful of released songs to date, “(I Wanna) Fuck Your Dad,” loud and clear for all to hear. “I’ll fuck your dad,” it starts, repeating that twice more, “… and he can fuck me.” She then smiled mischievously and walked away from the mic, having given the crowd that pungent sample of what they’d hear over about the next 40 minutes: sleaze-drenched, hedonistically charged garage-punk and electro-rock.
For believers in traditional rock ‘n’ roll’s seedier side, what Mikky & the Doom (top photo) have to offer never really gets old, if done well. Neither, for that matter, does the kind of stage presence Rib offers. A voice actor and musical impressionist who pulls off good-to-great impressions of the likes of Chappell Roan, Stevie Nicks, Gwen Stefani and Dolly Parton, she fronts the Doom with a classic glammed-up ’80s punk/new wave queen presentation, and channels every undulating, writhing rock frontman/woman from Iggy Pop to Jim Morrison to Karen O.
And without any pretensions to breaking ground, M & the D do their thing quite well indeed. Using the cozy Far Out patio setup she called “the best outdoor living room in Austin, Texas,” Rib used every corner of said living room. If the area in front of the stage was the foyer, she did a lot of brash front-door greeting, grooving and singing in concert goers’ faces, dropping on her back to the concrete and using the front speaker as a squatting platform. Her fellow Doom — bassist/synth-er Morgan Davis, guitarist Travis Kohnhorst and keyboardist Cesar Reyes — had all the pumping, insinuating rhythms down pat, helping Mikky punch through the likes of the ’90s-alternative groove of “Peaches in the Desert” and the powerful, dark “Good Girl.”
They closed with “Bite the Bullet,” a bass-and-synth-heavy, highway-friendly rocker where Mikky finds a sweet spot between the voices of Gwen Stefani, Billie Eilish and Abigail Morris of the Last Dinner Party — definitely a well-alloyed triangulation. An impression nerd myself, I actually came across Mikky for the first time on Instagram through her musical mimicry. I stayed for the rock ‘n’ roll. Live and on record, Mikky and the Doom have all the ingredients. More recordings are eagerly awaited.
Openers: Midnight Daughter, Killer Kaya
It was a night devoted to female-fronted rock, with two other compelling vocalists preceding Mikky & Co. on the Far Out stage. As much as Mikky’s overall presence defines the Doom, so too does the phenomenal voice of Aurora Smedley become the overwhelming defining characteristic of Midnight Daughter, which released its seven-track debut EP in April. Full of soaring range and versatile timbre ranging from folky to bitingly grunge-ish, Smedley just has a helluvan instrument within her, and strums away furiously on tunes of an intriguingly pounding but pastoral quality. Billed more than once out there as a prog-rock act, Midnight Daughter fits that in its somewhat classical sensibility and its sense of well-wrought drama, but in no other way (there aren’t any noodling 12-minute-long solos, and thank god for that). Excellent moments, such as a dramatically unfolding “The Black Oak,” wouldn’t work the way they do without a vocalist of Smedley’s ability and versatility.
First opener Killer Kaya was the kwirkiest … sorry, *quirkiest act of the three: smoldering and trippy space-psych distinguished — but not as completely dominated — by the high-register vibrato of lead singer Apoorva Chiplunkar. Hers is not the kind of voice heard atop your usual space-rock act. But it gives the band — which recently relocated to Austin from California and is rocking a new lineup — a distinctive element that hooks you in. And all the otherworldy effects and inviting acid-rock flourishes are there. The band’s last full-length, Tunnel at the End of the Light, was released in 2022.
Check out more photos from the show below.
Mikky & the Doom
Midnight Daughter
Killer Kaya
