Saturday, Dec 6 Rickshaw Stop + Throwin Bos co-present GREG FREEMAN Jawdropped Trinity Ace 7 pm doors $18 adv / $20 doors all ages Greg Freeman: Greg Freeman thrives on finding emotional catharsis an present-day resonance in the eccentric ugliness of the past. His songs all have a palpable sense of place thanks to his urgent delivery and evocative lyricism, which mines history for character-driven tales of violence, loss, and epiphany. On his sophomore LP Burnover, out August 22 via Canvasback Music/Transgressive Records, the Maryland-born, Burlington, Vermont-based artist uses the complicated backdrop of the Northeast to sing of grief, alienation, and the clarity that comes from opening up yourself to love. Explosive, unsettling, and undeniable, the 10 tracks here meld energetic indie rock with an ambling twang. It’s Freeman’s most adventurous and personal yet, cementing him as a singular songwriting talent. Jawdropped: Jawdropped formed a year ago in Los Angeles, California. Each member orbited one another in the city’s bubbling DIY community, trudging a trail of past projects that eventually brought the band together. Los Angeles courses through their debut EP Just Fantasy, and it’s easy to imagine many of Jawdropped’s witticisms as overheard conversations at local haunts like Zebulon or Permanent Records. The cheeky observations burrowed in Just Fantasy eschew the high horse, and instead poke fun from across the bar. It’s a balancing act between cynicism and optimism, forever falling apart but never giving up. Bay Area artist and songwriter Trinity Ace strings together themes of family, religion, violence, redemption, and forgiveness under a seven-piece orchestral ensemble. She brings her evocative lyrics and earworm melodies to her band of close friends and collaborators—Reid Devereaux, Declan Lewis, Ely Klem, Korey Loberg, Ben Stolz, and Patrick Madden—whose respective projects, including Double Helix Peace Treaty and Poor Image emerged from a tight creative ecosystem in San Francisco's Richmond District. The new singles, Martyr and Talisman are sprawling and ambitious tracks that settle into stunning, indie-folk-rock amalgamations that combine the blunt yet poetic storytelling and wry sincerity of Silver Jews and Leonard Cohen's biblical, slow-burn imagery. Unmistakably idiosyncratic yet strangely familiar, Trinity Ace and her band conjure a transfigured vision of Americana that reckons with the mythologies that haunt our national imagination.