TOADIES
THE CHARMER TOUR
LOCAL H
VANDOLIERS

Toadies return with The Charmer, their long-awaited eighth studio album and most personal and visceral work to date. One of the last recordings by the late and legendary producer Steve Albini, the record captures the Texas foursome live in the studio bottling their raw, Southern-tinged grunge with unfiltered immediacy.

Formed in Fort Worth in 1989, Toadies marry the band’s love for the Pixies and Talking Heads to the old-school country, ZZ Top, and classic rock they all grew up on. It’s a sound intoxicating but uneasy, cathartic yet always searching. Frontman Vaden Todd Lewis channels years of self-reflection into The Charmer, a concept born from pandemic isolation and a reckoning with self-doubt.

Released via Austin’s pioneering Spaceflight Records (The Sword, Die Spitz, Heartless Bastards), the world’s first nonprofit label, The Charmer embodies true creative freedom: made on their own terms, with Steve Albini their dream producer. The Charmer is the most defiantly “Toadies” Toadies album yet.

Local H is known for their blistering live shows and for pioneering the two-man band set-up — frontman Scott Lucas covers both guitar and bass through an extra pick up in his guitar and drummer Ryan Harding pounds out the rest of the sound. While they have earned praise in the past for their catalog of clever concept albums, Local H have forgone a singular theme on their most recent album — Hey, Killer (out April 2015 on G&P Records) — turning out a non-stop blast of straight-up, hooky, guitar-heavy rock songs — each one catchier than the last. The band’s discography includes seven other studio albums, a live album, and a bunch of EPs and “Straight Outta Zion,” a Blu-ray concert video (release date 8/12/16).

Local H’s widely praised 1998 concept album Pack Up the Cats earned a spot in SPIN magazine’s top 20 albums of that year. The band was named “Chicagoans of the Year” by the Chicago Tribune for their 2008 break-up album, 12 Angry Months, more than a decade after their breakthrough hit “Bound for the Floor” ruled the Modern Rock charts. In 2015, Local H celebrated the 25th anniversary of their first show and released a career-spanning coffee table book, Local H: Twenty-Five Years of Skin In The Game. Earlier this year, they re-issued their 1996 album, As Good As Dead, on vinyl for the first time.