Be Gentle, Jennifer: Avant pop comes to Shanghai

The Absolute House mailing list must be just about the only one we don't receive email from, because we only learned recently (by seeing an ad in a magazine) that Jennifer Gentle, a band from one of our favorite "indie" labels SubPop, will be performing there on June 24th (when Shanghaiist will conveniently be visiting Singapore). Because we know you are wondering: No one in Jennifer Gentle is named Jennifer — it's a bunch of guys from Italy.

This will actually not be their first time in China. They played gigs in Chengdu and Kunming earlier this year, largely due to the fact that their song "I Do Dream You" was used in this condom commercial on Yunnan TV. They also just had a a couple shows in Beijing.

The group's 2005 debut Valende received pretty good reviews and their very new (perhaps unreleased?) 2007 follow-up The Midnight Room is getting good ones, too. Critics are throwing around words like "weird," "creepy," "moody," "haunting," "psychotic," "scary," "experimental," "nocturnal," "bizarre," and "odd." Sounds great for dates!

The video embedded in this post is "I Do Dream You" live in Kunming. Other vids from their shows in China can be found here.

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Jennifer Gentle Prep LP, Peddle Condoms in China (Pitchfork)

Jennifer Gentle at Absolute House, Sunday, June 24. Bldg 6, X2 Creative, 20 Chaling Lu near Xietu Lu. Tel: 5108 6789. We're not sure how much tickets are — the Absolute House website was too annoying to find out. MySpace says the show is at 10 pm, but we'd call ahead if we were you. (We're in Guangdong now, or else we'd call for you.)