Blair Gun Curates Casbah Residency, Sharing Stage with Bands From Across San Diego

San Diego-based band Blair Gun brought booming bass lines and filthy riffs to the iconic and intimate Casbah music venue Tuesday.

The band, composed of Joedin Morelock (vocals, guitar), Zach Cavor (guitar), Jake Richter (drums) and Ashton Flores (bass), has been dubbed post-punk by listeners and critics, but has proven to be more fluid.

From their debut album to their sophomore album, released last June, the band’s sound has tightened to fit more of a garage-rock sound, while still maintaining a connection to the occasional absurd clang of punk rock.

“To me, post-punk is like, you’re rooted in some strong traditions of punk, but it’s such a broad, open-ended term that it necessitates some sort of experimentation happening,” Cavor said. “We just try to never pigeonhole ourselves to be just like a fast punk band, or we only do weird dissonant, diminished chord stuff and weird progressions.”

Their most recent record, titled, “There Are No Rival Clones Here,” is an 11-minute journey through dissonance, Cavor said. While the band said they don’t feel there is a particular link in the lyrics, they see a theme of disconnection in the songs.

“It’s the idea of, like, a safe place, where everybody’s doing their own thing, that can exist for many people despite the differences that we create for each other,” Cavor said. “That we’re really all somewhat … in the same boat. A lot of the themes in the songs on that record can apply to most people who feel differentiated by them.”

Disillusionment and jest, both classic tropes of punk rock, find their footing among the band’s lyrical constructions, from dissecting the never-ending growing pains of life to recounting battles lost against swarms of bugs during rehearsals.

They’ve embraced these elements of counterculture’s battlecry, but even as the band is looking to experiment beyond punk, they are leaning into the genre’s roots.

“I feel like the more time that’s gone by … I feel like we’re taking a more and more, like, political slant with what we’ve been writing about, just kind of harkening back to some of those punk roots, like dudes singing about how much they hated Reagan back in the day,” Cavor said.

Tuesday night’s show, the third of the band’s four-show residency as the Casbah, featured songs across the band’s discography as well as new songs played live for the first time.

Each night of the residency has featured new openers, hand-picked from the band’s local favorites, according to Blair Gun’s frontman, Morelock.

While each opener carried a heavy hand on the drums with screeching guitar chords, the progressions produced a different effect. Representing all different off-shoots of rock, there’s a novelty to each sound, and the curated line-ups reflect Blair Gun’s ability to experiment in their own music.

Dusk Drama, a five-man rock band that leans toward pop, started the evening with infectious energy. While drummer PJ Sweeney pounded out a beat that was both contained and chaotic on drums, frontman Alex Lievanos – whose appearance and energy is similar to a long-haired, young Jack Black – stepped down from the stage during the first song to crush some electric guitar chords at eye-level with the crowd.

The Oxen, a San Diego rock band whose sound is somewhere between The Breeders and Blur, took the stage second. The energy, while contained to the stage this time around, was nonetheless palpable from each member.

As Kevin Shumway, on bass, seemingly felt a shockwave from each note he hit, jumping back and forth through the bass line, Jozette Carrico Vineyard, on vocals and guitar, commanded attention despite being of equivalent size to her guitar.

When it was time for Blair Gun to play, the Gen X crew who came to see The Oxen filed out of the building, leaving behind those whose eardrums had enough in them to take another round of sound.

The first sounds to escape the Marshall speakers, set up against walls padded with what looked like leather couch cushions, were elongated guitar slides as they screeched and seemed to occupy every corner of the space.

Without warning, the band dived face-first into the set, lurching back and forth as they doled out resonant riffs. By the third song, the band already was turning in a new direction.

Cavor strummed the top of the neck of his electric guitar and carried a progression that felt reminiscent of something Spacehog would put out in the early ’90s. Gradually falling into a darker tune, Morelock stared straight ahead, expressionless, as he sang.

For a few moments while he zeroed in on the faces in front of him, he didn’t play the guitar but drew a figure eight with it in the air, the deep resonance in his voice somehow registering as the drums drowned out his sentences.

Maintaining the energy, even in down-tempo moments, they hit the notes with a calculated intensity, an exacting effect from the synchronicity between the four members.

Catch the band play the last show of their residency, alongside local bands Silver Bullet and The Microblades, on Tuesday at the Casbah.