Fidelity Jones – Destructor
Ben Dransfield – Here Now
Teen Idles – Adventure
Brian Settles & Central Union – Bison
Rod Hamilton – Aqua 1
SIR E.U – WMATA (t3nnisball)
Trifilio Tango Trio – La Sabionda
Abu Jibran – Bowtie
Dupont Brass – The Way
Outputmessage – Lungs
Gordon Withers – Hurry Up And Wait
BOOMscat – RUNNINGONE
Constant Alarm – Iowa
Low End String Quartet – Grinder
Denis Malloy & Stanley “Z” Ng – Surprise Five
Beauty Pill – Idiot Heart
J. Reid – Smoking a j at the end of the Anthropocene
Mission South – Peaches
Joy Buttons – Other
Kokayi – The MFN Yay

The Dwindlers – Pickering’s Hyla
Joy Buttons – Other
Cigarbox Planetarium – Oh! Tinnitus
Title Tracks – Piles of Paper
Emily Henry – Hands
Lenny Kurlou – Treat You Like a Lady (Instrumental)
Haint Blue – Undefined
Flash Frequency – Supreme Dream
Astronaut Jones – Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas
Redline Graffiti – Beauty Mark 2
Aaron Tinjum and the Tangents – The Wild and Beyond
Elijah Jamal Balbed – Lament For Booker
Luxas – Arbo-domo en la Nuboj (Tree-house In the Clouds)
We Were Pirates – Sunday Paper
Little Hunts – Derealize
Suzanne Brindamour – In the Sky
Bill Emerson & Sweet Dixie – All the Best
More Humans – Barbaro
Bossalingo – Round Midnight
Sri Rama – Refreshing

Astronaut Jones – Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas
Jonathan Parker – Jacqui
Three Man Soul Machine – Rastaman Chant
Redline Graffiti – Two Face
Joy Buttons – Other
East Ghost – Clouds and Their Shape
Golden Looks – Rooftop
Justin Jones – My Father’s Gun
Griefloss – łłł
Lands – Sometimes
Olivia Neutron-John – 16 BEAT
Sligo Creek Stompers – Cuckoo’s Nest
Astra Via – Fast Forward
Young Master Sunshine Photogenic 1982 – West Georgia
Bad Brains – Ragga Dub
Peyote Pilgrim – District City
Cigarbox Planetarium – Oh! Tinnitus
Philip Lassiter – Set You Free
Wale – Love Hate Thing (Tone P Instrumental)
Bossalingo – Manha de Carnaval

“Obviously, at first, music and libraries seems like a head-scratcher because libraries are quiet,” says local promoter, artist manager and record-label owner Jim Thomson. But for the past six months, Thomson has been helping change expectations about what goes on inside D.C.’s public libraries.

On behalf of scrappy theater nonprofit Capital Fringe, Thomson has been programming “Fringe Music in the Library,” one of two series bringing live music to the D.C. Public Library system. The other series is strictly punk rock, presented by the library’s D.C. Punk Archive. DCPL has been hosting those noisy gigs since October 2014 to help promote its growing collection of D.C. punk ephemera. The latest show takes place downtown tonight — with D.C. bands Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers — then Friday it’s back to Thomson, who’s bringing in D.C.’s CooLots under the Capital Fringe banner.

For the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library — D.C.’s central library downtown — these shows help it build a reputation as a cultural center. It’s a rebranding for a facility that’s been dogged by systemwide budget cuts and criticism of its Brutalist architecture. (The District is planning to overhaul MLK Library in two years and add an auditorium.) DCPL has also had to confront complaints from residents who openly — many would say crudely — gripe about homeless residents who utilize the library’s amenities. Then there’s the bigger picture: Libraries all over the world are facing questions about their role in the 21st century. Could it be prudent to focus on libraries not just as information warehouses, but cultural beacons?

“One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture.” —Linnea Hegarty, executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation

Linnea Hegarty, the executive director of the D.C. Public Library Foundation, seems to think so. She says the foundation covers the costs of both D.C. Public Library concert series — including fees to the bands — and says they’re now funded through 2016. “One of our primary goals is to establish the library as a go-to place for local culture,” Hegarty writes via email.

Capital Fringe is best known for its annual performing-arts event, the Fringe Festival. But last year, under Julianne Brienza’s leadership, the organization hired Thomson to take over music-booking at the festival, then asked him to handle the eclectic library shows she had set into motion. Those events overlapped with the D.C. Punk Archive’s basement shows, which Martin Luther King Jr. Library music librarian Maggie Gilmore says were “designed to increase attention to and support of the D.C. Punk Archive,” its ongoing effort to document the District’s three-chord rock scene.

Michele Casto, one of the librarians who helped get the D.C. Punk Archive off the ground, says DCPL wants to show that the punk archive isn’t just about long-gone history.

“Having shows that feature current local bands helps reiterate the point that the archive is 1976 to the present, that we’re documenting local music that’s happening now not just local music of the past,” Casto writes in an email.

The punk gigs also aim to support the next generation of D.C. musicians. “For every show, we’ve tried to include a band that’s either just getting started, or that consists of kids — i.e. bands that might have a hard time getting a gig in a club,” Casto writes. “This gives them a place to get experience performing.”

The punk shows take place every other month and have included raucous performances from Joy Buttons, Hemlines, Flamers and Priests. Under Thomson, the Fringe gigs have dabbled in punk, too — roping in punk provocateur Ian Svenonius multiple times — but they’ve prized diversity, bringing in the rarely seen soul singer George Smallwood, Afropop vocalist Anna Mwalagho, jazz/poetry act Heroes Are Gang Leaders and the Ethiopian Jazz Quartet with Feedel Band‘s Araya Woldemichael.

“I hope that the citizens will come in and get inspired by seeing an Ethiopian jazz quintet and go, ‘Wow,'” Thomson says.

Some younger residents, it seems, have already found that inspiration. When guitarist Anthony Pirog performed at the downtown library with his surf band, The El Reys, librarians projected the film Endless Summer while kids bopped around. They were “dancing and bouncing around wildly, full of excitement for the music,” Gilmore emails. “That put a smile on everyone’s face.”

Now, if only more people would come to the shows.

Woldemichael guesses that at his recent library gig, “50 percent of them were curious folks and the rest were my friends, family members and fans.” Thomson acknowledges that a recent performance at the Benning Road library only brought a handful of people. “The branch libraries are a little more challenging to get attendance,” he says. “Mainly location, location, location. It’s hard to get interest in it, or to publicize it.”

The promoter hopes that momentum will build over time. “I know from when you are working with regular venues, you don’t get a slam dunk in the beginning, always,” he says. “You have to plant a seed and let it have a chance to germinate. We are really in a very early stage.”

Meanwhile, artists seem appreciative of the series’ benevolent mission — even if the room doesn’t fill up.

“Heroes Are Gang Leaders really felt that this performance [at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library] was a special opportunity to reach out to and interact with longtime D.C. residents, amidst the city’s advanced stages of gentrification, displacement and widespread oppression of many Washingtonians,” band member Luke Stewart writes in an email.

Plus, it gives residents a chance to absorb culture — for free — that they wouldn’t normally come across, Thomson says. In a way, that’s the role of a library in the first place.

“For me, the side benefit is to go into libraries that are in parts of the city that are not part of my everyday life,” the promoter says. “It helps you interact with the city. I like to see these different things that makes the city as an organism come to life.”

Give, Puff Pieces and The Maneuvers play the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 6 p.m. June 11. The CooLots play at noon on June 12. For a complete schedule of Capital Fringe concerts at D.C.’s libraries, consult this calendar. The Punk Archive basement shows are usually publicized on the D.C. Public Library’s Facebook page.

Top photo courtesy of Jim Thomson

That’s because Polyon’s first demo recording on Soundcloud, “Crest,” came across more like space rock than McLaughlin’s other two current projects. And it seems like that’s the direction Polyon is headed with its newest song, “More,” a big and crunchy anthem that sounds powered by rocket fuel.

It’s Adam Lake’s synth whirrs that lend Polyon a streak of prog. Take them out, and you’ve got the bones of a solid post-rock ensemble. But “sludgy fuzz-pop” has been the band’s chosen descriptor, McLaughlin writes in an email — and hey, that works, too.

Lyrically, “More” seems to mirror a creative evolution that McLaughlin has undertaken since his other band Typefighter went from genteel to aggressive.

“I tend to have some trouble saying ‘no’ to people and I have been actively trying to be a bit more assertive,” McLaughlin writes. “So in this one, I am more or less reminding myself that it’s OK to say ‘yes’ so long as I’m not letting anyone walk all over me.”

With his guitar turned up this loud, McLaughlin doesn’t appear to need help being forceful.

“More” is included on Polyon’s three-song demo EP, out digitally this Thursday, when the band tops a bill at DC9. The headlining slot feels like a vote of confidence for a band that still hasn’t played many gigs.

Polyon’s show count falls “somewhere between 10 and 15,” McLaughlin writes. “I think we just passed the 10 mark a show or two ago.”

Polyon plays DC9 March 19 with Solids and Stronger Sex.

The frenetic D.C. punk band still plays the same brand of breakneck songs found on its debut EP—the kind that charge through post-hardcore and punk blastbeats. The group still screams lyrics and blares its songs to crowds of sweaty kids in basements.

But McLaughlin—one of two guitarists in the band and a veteran of D.C.’s punk and hardcore scene—says he can see changes creeping in. They come from the group’s two years together, which have given Joy Buttons’ members time to get comfortable with each other and find a sound of their own. It doesn’t hurt that those players have been performing music for years, and they all sit in the middle of a D.C. rock-music Venn diagram: Singer Brandon Moses also makes tunes with Laughing Man and Paperhaus, bassist Matt Dowling splits his time in Deleted Scenes and The Effects, guitarist Erik Sleight plays in Br’er and McLaughlin shares his talents with Typefighter and new band Polyon.

“They know how to write a song and know how to be in a band,” says McLaughlin.

That could explain the maturity found on Joy Buttons’ new EP, Other, released Tuesday. Its four songs sound punk, but they’re melodically sophisticated, more in line with the pop-punk label McLaughlin applies to the band.

“It’s a little bit more evolved, soundwise,” McLaughlin says of the release. “We spent a little more time honing the songs. We’ve gotten to know our sound a little better.”

There’s no clearer example of that growth than the record’s title track. “Other” opens with a hip-shaking drum line that backs subtle bass and reverb-laden guitar—a combination that could find a home on the dreamiest of pop tracks. But by its midway point, the song devolves back into punk sludge, with Moses wailing a kind of dark philosophy: “Is this life as simple as good and evil?/Make yourself your enemy, come full circle.”

The pretty beginning and the noisy ending was the whole idea for the song, McLaughlin says, and it’s something the band didn’t attempt during the rush to put together its first EP, last November’s Arkhipov. Now, “Other” stands as a signpost on the way to progress—an indicator of an already good band getting better together.

Young Trynas

The Sniffs

Pinkwash

Joy Buttons