Not only is The Mighty Mighty one of our favourite bars, what with its endear­ing­ly gauche fit out and enter­tain­ing­ly gauche barstaff and wot-not, but this week­end they host two very excit­ing (and very dif­fer­ent!) gigs.

Mes­tar are tour­ing their recent album Shut The Squiz­wot Fac­to­ries Down and on Fri­day night (the 20th) they play at Mighty Mighty with Hot Swiss Mis­tress.

And then, on Sat­ur­day night (the 21st), at the start­ing time of 9pm is the avant-punk the­atrics of Mr. Ster­ile Assem­bly, with Xenu and Thee Strapons.

Mes­tar (MySpace page here) are a nation­al trea­sure and I love them a lot. Back in 2004 I kin­da-reviewed their album Por­cu­pine as well as a gig I saw them play. (Ahh those heady days of the Cross bar.) Shut The Squiz­wot Fac­to­ries Down is out on Arch Hill and about it I recent­ly found myself dash­ing-off a few excitable sen­tences to a friend:

the breath­less­ly twee vocals.. the gra­tu­itous­ly soft-loud-soft-loud dynam­ics of Nir­vana.. the effort­less­ly catchy and irre­press­ible pow­er-pop predilec­tions of Teenage Fan­club.. the buzz and atten­tion to son­ic detail of prime My Bloody Valen­tine.. all com­bine to form a sum of parts which is every­thing you ever want­ed in a mod­ern pop record…

Here’s the press from Mr. Ster­ile:

Xenu: 2 piece bass/drums, math pop that brazen­ly lurchs into dark­er ter­ror­to­ries.. Mr Ster­ile Assem­bly: scronk­ing car­toon char­ac­ters with tooo much to say, in a post-Asian tour/pre-record­ing fren­zy.. and Thee Strapons: Russ Mey­er, with safe­ty pin in his nose, and a G.G. Allin sneer, in the wildest go-go fren­zy

Sounds fun, eh. Do yer­self a favour and treat your ears.

(Yes, that is a Frankman poster. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly there is an under­ground comix fest on this week­end. This looks good, too.)