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.)