By Timothy Karloff : sfgate – excerpt (includes video)
Chokecherry scored millions of Spotify streams. They’re still playing in garages.
In less than a year, San Francisco band Chokecherry has racked up twice as many Spotify streams as their city’s population. They’ve played a show in Mexico City, toured with Death Valley Girls and produced a music video polished enough to embarrass some major label outfits. They are, by all indications, a band on the verge of blowing up.
But tonight, they’re playing in a SoMa garage.
Onstage — although the “stage” is just a square of concrete floor — drummer Abri Crocitto abruptly picks up the pace, and Chokecherry’s shoegaze track careens headlong into thrash territory. The crowd reacts in lockstep, and the mosh pit quickly dissolves into a blitzed game of Twister, with as many feet kicking the air as touching the ground. Someone tall has peeled off his sweaty shirt, which he swings over his head like a helicopter propeller. As the song reaches its climax, Izzie Clark rubs the neck of her guitar against E. Scarlett Levinson’s bass, and the pair throw their heads back…(more)
Another hot new band heading for a bigger stage in the Big Apple.
Voices from the Front 