Three of Milwaukee’s most reliable bands brought a little bit of the Cactus Club to Summerfest Monday night at the Cascio Interstate Music Groove Garage.
Music history is filled with great dropped ideas, and the 1990s, in particular, were rife with them. Milwaukee’s Testa Rosa picks up some of these loose ends, continuing where bands like Belly, That Dog, Throwing Muses or pretty much any other band that ever featured Tanya Donelly or one of the Haden triplets left off. Allusions to the ’90s abound: The guitars adhere to the same strum-and-squall dynamic of ’90s alterna-pop; Betty Blexrud-Strigens cough-syrup-smooth vocals evoke Kim Deal; the hazy bass riff on “Ollie Delilah” nods to Weezer’s iconic “Only in Dreams” riff.