Several solid bands played a show at Bremen Cafe on Saturday night, bringing in a tight-knit crowd. Milwaukee bands The Nile Club and Cozy Danger plus Madison’s Quick and Painless all made appearances.

The Nile Club are a crunchy alternative rock trio consisting of guitarist Malachi Kaehne, bassist Sam Walters, and drummer Samwise Baker. All three of them trade off on vocals. They have been a band for about four years and named themselves after an abandoned casino.

“I met Malachi in high school and we both knew Samwise, and I played in Samwise’s dad’s band. We all got together and started jamming until we decided what we were doing was cool enough to keep doing,” Walters said.

Their debut record “Motions” came out in 2019.

“The recording process for us is always very long because we do everything ourselves,” Walters explained. “We basically made demos of all the songs and had them for a couple years, and then we finally sat down and recorded them all.”

“What we’ve done in the past is write songs on our own and then bring them to the group and play them together,” Baker added about their songwriting. “We’re now trying to write together more; that’s the goal for this next album.”

They’ve released two singles in the last few weeks, “Ob-Long” and “Burnt Young Man.” Walters gives some backstory.

“”Ob-Long” started as a joke. Me, Malachi, and our previous bassist worked on it, and then me and Malachi traded lines on it back-and-forth until we had the entire song made. “Burnt Young Man” is a song I wrote about a relationship I was in at the time, and it was one of those where I knew she was not treating me the greatest but because I was a people-pleaser I would feel like I’m lying.”

He shares a bit about the new record they’re working on.

“We have pretty much the entire thing recorded. We had to get rid of our bassist and he had two songs on it so we had to re-record those. We’re almost done with it. We’ve been playing most of the songs for a while. It’s noisy…sometimes sad…sometimes happy.”

The Nile Club play Bremen Cafe again on the 10th and then again on the 13th.

Cozy Danger are a garage-jangle pop trio consisting of vocalist/guitarist/synthesizer Chris Vertovec, bassist/vocalist Phil Gieschen, and drummer/vocalist Jake Brandt. They formed about ten years ago with a three-year hiatus.

“I feel like we didn’t put out quite as much music as we could’ve in the early years and now we’re kind of making up for lost time,” Brandt said. “Right now we’re in the studio with Shane over at Howl Street and that guy is a machine. We’re just about to come out with our next EP that he helped us put together. Every time we get a mix back from him we’re just like “…that’s not us! that’s another band!” because it sounds too fucking good. That dude is a goddamn magician.”

Their three-song EP “Invincible Dog Story” came out last December. Brandt shares a bit about it.

“It stemmed from the song “Where Are All My Dogs At?” which was kind of the lead song from that EP. A lot of people gravitated towards it whenever we’d play it out. We’ve been lucky to have folks respond; 88Nine picked it up and have been playing it, the music video got some exposure, and Breaking and Entering were kind enough to share it. For the video we rounded up all the dogs that we knew out of all our friends so we had like twenty dogs, and we just went on a tour of filming everyone’s dogs. It was in the middle of COVID so it was the first time we’d seen anybody in like a year.”

“Two of the songs I sing on and on “Where Are All My Dogs At?” Jake sings,” Vertovec said. “That one’s about social anxiety at a party. The title of the EP came from words from each of the song titles; we were trying to come up with a name and I threw it into our group text as a joke and it just stuck.”

Vertovec describes their songwriting process.

“If I have a guitar lick that I can’t come up with a vocal melody for I bring it to the group, and then Jake somehow magically plays the drum part that I’m picturing in my head. Other times I’ll have a full song laid out, which doesn’t happen as much as I’d like, but when it does happen it’s just these guys filling in the missing pieces. We’ve been playing together for so long; I can have these ideas in my head for how I want the rest of it to go, and they just do it without me saying anything.”

“My uncle owns a music venue down in Denton, Texas and I have a music poster from there of a jazz trio,” Brandt added. “It’s just a line drawing but all the heads kind of meld into one head at the end. When you’ve been playing together for so long it feels like we all just start to share a brain.”

Cozy Danger are wrapping up the mixing process for their next EP.

“The song “Fuck Yeah, Get it Girl” is our anthem to strong, powerful women,” Brandt said. “It’s inspired by both Chris and I’s wives. I’m so stoked about these songs.”

As of now they do not have any more shows lined up.

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