Here's a bonus Late Night Music Club. Today is Bastille Day, and I can think of no better way to celebrate than with Les Thugs, the band closest to my heart.

Angers, France's Les Thugs have put out more records on Sub Pop records than most of their roster, and have probably sold the least. Thankfully, Sub Pop was always happy to let their bigger bands subsidize the quartet's superior mix of shoegaze and garage-punk. From a great article in the Seattle Weekly last summer, when Sub Pop convinced them to get back together to play for the Sub Pop 20th anniversary, and I got on a plane and slept on my friend's couch for a weekend:

"They were really, really intense, and really fun to watch. I was just riveted for half an hour," [Sub Pop founder Jonathan] Poneman recalls of the band's explosive performance. And yet, he says, "There's an almost shoegaze quality to what they do. It's punk rock in spirit and execution, but there's also something very hypnotic about [it]." (snip)

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