Disco Biscuits

As much as the term may scream cliché, "jam band" has come to represent a springboard from which imaginative artists can create progressive variations on the vocabulary popularized by the likes of Phish and the Dead. Formed 10 years ago in typical fashion—on the campus of Philadelphia's U Penn as a frat-house-haunting regular—Disco Biscuits stick closer to the fence, managing to expand jam-band vocabulary while remaining faithful to it. The Biscuits fire on all cylinders when they step away almost entirely and land with both feet in their own rather soulful brand of rock. Fans and newcomers can revel in both faces of the Disco Biscuits on not one but two just-released live albums, both of which demonstrate the Biscuits' penchant for slow-building atmospheres and solid rock song structure...even as they tear it to shreds. 18+.
Sat., Oct. 20, 6 p.m., 2007