Bass Drum of Death with Farmer's Wife at Turntable

Name: Bass Drum of Death with Farmer's Wife at Turntable
Start: 2025-09-25T20:00:00-04:00
Location: 6281 N College Ave, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Indiana 46220

Schedule

Thu, 25 Sep, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

6281 N College Ave, Indianapolis, IN, United States, Indiana 46220 | Indianapolis, IN

Bass Drum of Death: SIX USA TOUR 2025 with special guest Farmer's Wife at Turntable in Indianapolis on Thursday, September 25, 2025!
Bass Drum of Death
Hailing from Oxford, Mississippi, Bass Drum of Death initially started out in 2007 as the one-man-band solo project of John Barrett, releasing the Stain Stick Skin EP on Fat Possum in 2008. Their debut album, GB City, followed in 2011. Barrett also began touring, working with a varied lineup of musicians for live performances.
Moving to Innovative Leisure for both a self-titled sophomore LP in 2013 and Rip This in 2014 (produced by Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait), the band continued touring North America, Europe, and Australia including lengthy support slots for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Royal Blood.
The band returned in 2018 with Just Business, released on Century Media, and by 2020, Barrett had put together a new lineup, collaborating with his younger brother, guitarist Jim Barrett, and drummer Ian Kirkpatrick. The trio then released the 7” single “Too Cold to Hold/Wait” in 2020 and “You Were Right”, a collaboration single with Eve 6 in 2021.
The band then spent much of the COVID lockdown working on new material, culminating in 2023 when they reunited with Fat Possum and delivered the group’s fifth full-length, Say I Won’t, produced by Patrick Carney of the Black Keys. The group released a live LP titled Live...and Let Die in June of 2024, and is currently working on a 6th studio album.

Farmer's Wife
There is an intersection of dark fairy tales and anguished love, technological nightmares and horror show romance. Brooding squarely within that crossroads sits Austin’s Farmer’s Wife. Pulling from 90’s dirge rock, 60’s psych and occasionally 80’s nonchalance, their songs are reminiscent of classic early records from Smashing Pumpkins, Slowdive, and Hole as well as the pained imagery of 2000’s emo pioneers. Songs as powerful as they are frail, as ethereal as they are stark.
If singer Molly Masson’s coquettish onstage performance distracts you from the despair, anger and confusion in her voice, that’s just part of the puzzle. The nuances of their music deliberately creep out at each listen. Lulling, intricate guitar lines traded between Jude Hill, Derek Ivy and bassist Jacob Masson. Hypnotic drumming from Jaelyn Valero that at times, when their live show spirals into free-form abandon and structure is left behind, recalls John Densmore.
Farmer’s Wife however, for all their experimentation, are master songwriters, never more capably displayed than on gentle yet jarring songs such as “Keep Hate In Your Heart” or in lines that run from the epitome of sweet (“I miss having her hand here in mine”) to ghastly (“I chop you up in little pieces let you grow a little mold; My fungus, worms and rats will eat at all your fats until you cease to exist”).
Their new EP Faint Illusions takes this journey to a grittier place musically, but with the same familiar themes lurking throughout the songs. Decomposing, fading, withering – all imagery turned from grim finality to romantic despair. “Tangled up in silk again. Cover me in your mildew….The fruit it rots and falls onto me,” sings Molly on “Mildew,” again turning decay into ardor.
Repeatedly the band weaves the most delicate lyrical webs through a storm of instrumental dirge that recalls early Jane’s Addiction and Tool in its meandering intensity: “Walking down the sunset stars are in the street. One pocket full of posies, one pocket full of meat” sets the ghoulish tone for “The Ballet,” a song that starts in whimsical twilight before spiraling into a fever dream of night and chaos.
The final track, “Discount Roses,” sees a simple tale of falling in love swallowed by metaphors of alien abduction and a nod to a paradise of the afterlife – coming full circle on the arc of love’s birth and death.
It’s the purest of storytelling – both intensely personal and conversely voyeuristic. At one moment a world seen through their eyes, the next relegated to watching it play out through a window, isolated. That push-pull of intimacy and distance is central to the recordings and the live show, leaving you constantly off-balance but always enraptured.