Thursday, March 15   1:00 a.m.
Momo's   (618 W 6th St)

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  Takka Takka - We Feel Safer At Night
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Takka Takka is Gabe Levine (vocals, guitar), Conrad Doucette (drums), Damion Jurrens (guitar), and Grady Jurrens (bass). The quartet hail from Brooklyn, New York, and have been playing together since 2004. Their self-produced debut album, We Feel Safer at Night, will be released in the U.S. this spring.

Takka Takka began when Gabe returned from a near-disastrous year in Texas (he bought a pickup truck and several cowboy shirts � enough said). Back in Brooklyn, he began recording demos of new material, and recruited some old friends to help him work out a live set. One thing led to another, and Takka Takka played its first show in a basement in Williamsburg in March of 2004.

Armed with the sort of confidence that comes from playing a basement on a cold spring night, Gabe spent the next year rotating members in and out of the lineup, until he finally recruited Conrad to play drums and Damion to play guitar in November of 2005. Along with bass player and longtime collaborator John Paul Jones, the group crafted a set of indie rock tunes that acknowledged their Gotham inspirations (Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Philip Glass) while maintaining the easy lilt of a warm Austin night. They played more shows, they gained confidence, and they decided it was time to let the tape roll.

In April of 2006, the group barricaded itself into the Seaside Lounge, a Brooklyn studio renowned for its laid-back atmosphere and raw food diet. After cutting the basic tracks with producer Charles Burst at Seaside, Gabe took the songs home and brooded over them for 6 weeks. �The recording process was kind of painful,� he recalls. �I spent 10 hours a day working on this stuff. By the end, some of the tracks had 20 keyboard overdubs.� The result was We Feel Safer at Night, an eclectic, jubilant set of songs that are sure to turn these four Brooklynites into indie rock superstars. The album so impressed DIY poster boys Clap Your Hands Say Yeah that they invited the band to tag along on a high-profile U.S. tour.

The tour provided Takka Takka with the opportunity to play in front of huge crowds every night, and the band pulled through with head-turning performances that gained fans in every city they visited (except maybe one�). Selling CDs and t-shirts out of their van, eating greasy food, and sleeping in budget motels solidified the bond between the members. Jones resigned at the end of the tour and was replaced by Damion�s brother, Grady.

Since then, Takka Takka�s visibility has continued to rise, with glowing write-ups in blogs and print, and a string of high-profile shows at the CMJ New Music Marathon. They plan on a full-scale US tour in spring of 2007, and hope to tour the UK, Ireland, and Europe in the near future.