District Lies

Of all the DC bands I’ve paid attention to over the years, Imperial China is my least-favorite name since Q and Not U (whose name I have complained about publically here). Much like their unfortunately-appellated predecessors, the band-name turn-off kept me from checking out Imperial China for a long time, though I started to hear things about them a while ago. I finally caught them live last summer, and in a way I’m sorry to have missed out on them over the past couple of years — but based on Phosphenes I don’t have to really worry about it, because they seem like a band that is just starting to gel.

Here’s the thing about the album (coming out in February via Sockets/Ruffian): it’s very good, but not very easy to get into. Nowadays it is hard to summon the patience to absorb a whole album by a band you don’t already know, let alone one like Phosphenes that comes with a few features likely to make too many listeners click the “next” button. Musically, things are only slightly difficult. Imperial China offer up a very good-sounding mix of basic rock instruments and electronics, reminiscent at times of bands like Battles or the electronica of recent tastemaker-faves Fuck Buttons. The songs are sinewy and tense, tight but short on hooks, rarely too concerned about rocking out. This isn’t NPR rock, but it isn’t really extreme, either. The recording sounds great, although, as a guitarist, I must say that the only instrument that really stands out is the guitar, which isn’t too technically complicated, but sure has awesome effects. The electronics are pretty solid, occasionally adding unexpected twists like Radiohead-esque chilly background drones in “Letter of a General” and unsettling chimes on “The Last Starfighter” that remind me of the weird “Lullaby version of Tool” that my brother once used as a rough soundtrack to a film. It’s also pretty well steeped in DC rock tradition, from Fugazi to Frodus, and bears a lot of hallmarks of producer Devin Ocampo (from Faraquet/Medications/etc.).

Musically and sonically, Phosphenes grabbed me right away, but the thing that took me a few listens to come around to was the vocals. It’s not that they’re bad at all, but I think they are an acquired taste. On my first listen to the album, my favorite song was an instrumental, “Mortal Wombat.” The singing is just trying to do way too much, and the songs depend too much on vocals that aren’t as good as the music. The singing sounds best at its most melodic, as on the other first-listen highlight, the pop song of the record, “Go Where Airplanes Go.” Whereas the vocals are at their worst when they are kind of spat-out and shouted, as on the opening track, “All That Is Shouted.”

But what I realized after a couple listens was that the singing, while not amazing, is actually doing a lot of very cool things. There is D. Boon-style patter on “Invincible,” Tim Harrington hollering on “Bananamite,” and creepy crooning on “A Modern Life” that sounds an awful lot like singer/winemaker Maynard James Keenan. It’s pretty fun to notice this stuff, and I gradually came around a bit to the vocals, on the whole. The lyrics seem about what you’d expect from this kind of music, all quite appropriate for a DC band. (And by the way it is nice to just think that there are “DC bands” in the heritage of the ’90s scene that I loved so much.)

I hope enough people can get past mildly-challenging music and mildly-weak vocals to listen to the whole record, because it is nicely arranged into a whole. The whole thing twists and teases, keeping you on a sinister edge, refusing to really lead you anywhere. It’s deliberately frustrating. Even the killer closer track, “Letter of a General,” starts to build up and build up in traditional rock and roll style, then — well — sort of deflates. This isn’t an album that is interested in just giving out rewards — you have to earn them through a little work of your own. I can appreciate that, and hopefully some other people will too, because this is one of the better albums by local bands to come out in the past few years.

Here are my favorite songs… enjoy, and go see this band when you can, and here is their myspace page where you can support them and buy stuff.

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P.S. if you don’t know what “phosphenes” are, look it up. This is a cool word, and I wonder how long it’s been on the band’s radar. I kinda wish the band was called Phosphenes instead of the album…

Although the dizzying changes in music fandom over the past decade have been overwhelmingly to the good, there are lots of things I miss about indie rock circa 1999. Some of the things I miss are probably shared by any music fan my age: I miss listening to full-length albums in depth, instead of sifting through thousands of mp3s; I miss record stores; blah blah blah. This stuff has been re-hashed to death. But living in Washington, DC, there is something I miss that probably not too many others do: a little record label called Slowdime. Slowdime put out a whole bunch of great albums by a diverse group of local musicians, the kind of records that weren’t really appropriate for the much-bigger Dischord, but records that deserved a chance and an audience. Slowdime helped to document a surprisingly thriving local music scene, and I gradually started to trust the label as an arbiter of really great local music that might not exactly sell to a mass audience, but could help local music fans know what shows to go to, who to look out for. Also, you could buy the CDs and feel like you were helping pay back the people in your own neighborhood who were working hard to support interesting and challenging artists. It seemed like a pretty great feedback loop.

Slowdime slowly faded away in the early part of the ’00s, and not-so-coincidentally, so did a lot of my interest in local bands and music. There was still a lot of great music being made here, but when blogs took over from record labels as curators and promoters of talent, it felt like the music scene was all scattered and incoherent. DC indie music seemed mediocre, at best; the good stuff was drowning in a blandly generic sea. The giant of the independent music scene locally, Dischord, slowed down its work considerably (and understandably), and didn’t really dive into the new-media universe (again, understandably). A couple other local labels came and went. Some interesting music websites have floated around. Experimental music has had a kind of a coherent scene. But for rock music, good rock music, things seemed kind of dead, and this was exacerbated by the collapse of the record industry. It seemed like the whole idea of a small-time local record label was both quaint and quixotic, at least up until the past year or so when I started paying attention to Sockets Records.

Sockets has a diverse roster, but seems to focus on creative and interesting music, with an emphasis on DC. The label isn’t new, but it has been actually gearing up its publicity and raising its public profile lately. They’re trying to hype their bands; they use all the idiotic essential modern tools like blogs and facebooks; they seem to really want people to listen to the music they are pushing. And luckily, they’re working with a lot of the best up-and-coming talent in the city. Is Sockets the new Slowdime? Not really — the world has changed too much in the past ten years. But maybe Sockets can help use the idea of a record label in a new way to get people excited about the local scene. It’s all about the branding, and I am already learning to trust anything that is Sockets-approved.

Tomorrow night they are having a showcase at the Black Cat that I highly recommend… I can also recommend the upcoming Imperial China album from Sockets, which I am about to post a review for. Go to the showcase! It is gonna be the musical event of the season, featuring Cornel West Theory, HUME, Imperial China, Buildings, and Big Gold Belt. Info here.

A few things to mention here for my hypothetical readers. First off I thought I would take a moment to mention my favorite live music performance of the year. And the winner by a landslide was Primal Scream. Yes! They played at the 930 Club in March and put on a rollicking good show. I’d never seen them before and have been wanting to forever, and I was just at the right level of tipsiness to dance all around and have a total fucking blast. I wasn’t writing up shows here at the time but there are some reviews that cover it pretty well.

How did the Scream stack up to my favorite shows of all time? Very well. Give me a few years to reflect and maybe I will add this show to the list.

I think my other favorite performances of the year were by S PRCSS and Dean and Britta. But there were lots of others too, of course! Good year for live music.

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Recently I got an email from the band Imperial China asking me if I’d review their forthcoming new album. I’m gonna do it shortly (it’s pretty good) but it made me think about what I can do to support the good local bands. It’s not like this blog gets a lot of traffic, but on the other hand, I don’t seek out traffic, in fact this site is halfway hidden off from the rest of the web. But I think I will go ahead and open things up a little more. And here’s the deal (I’ll have to put this over in the sidebar): I am a huge fan of live music but also an old and cynical fan. My socks are not knocked off all that easily. If you’re a local band, feel free to send me an email or a copy of your music or an invitation to a show. I’ll write you up. If I like your music, I will try to help promote your shows. But you should also check out my musical taste and realize I am not enamored of all that many local bands. I won’t promise an especially nice review, but you never know.

– — – — – — –

Last thing I wanted to mention, I am completely siked about the state of live shows here in the ’10s (the teens?), as far as the youtubification of it all. How amazing is it to re-live the best shows? (Like, I can’t get enough of this awesome Office of Future Plans video). Should I try getting some sort of… I dunno… video camera? I go to a lot of great shows that nobody else is recording, like the Versus show last month. I would love to contribute them to the universe, and relive them myself. But on the other hand I am not really interested in holding a camera in front of me for big chunks of a rock and roll show. Hmm. Anyone do this? I could get a Flip or something but I honestly don’t know if I want to. I’ll think about it.

This has been a busy/strange time… holidays, epic snowstorms, bouts of H1N1, apartment/living situation drama. As a result I missed a lot of shows (and why didn’t somebody tell me that Grant Hart played at the Velvet Lounge???) and anticipate missing too many more. But one that I really didn’t want to miss (though maybe I’d have traded it for Grant Hart — damn…) turned out to be the last show I saw in 2009: my favorite band, Versus, for the first time in like 8 years.

So I have been complaining about going to too many reunion shows, but then, Versus never was exactly broken up, so it’s ok that I went, right? They really are probably my all-time favorite band (the only other contender is Sonic Youth); I saw them play a lot of times back in the late ’90s and beginning of the ’00s; I have basically everything they’ve ever recorded and know the bulk of their lyrics by heart. Versus have played some occasional gigs in the time since they went on hiatus, including at least once or twice here in DC (Teenbeat anniversaries, for example), but I haven’t been able to go to any of them. Now, though, it seems like they are really “together,” playing a fair amount, recording a new album (!).

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this show, though. I checked out a few recent performances on youtube and they left me uncertain and even a little nervous. The line-up has shifted a bit, as they now feature Richard and Fontaine with Ed on drums and a woman named Margaret on violin. It was a little strange, but I found that I could accept this line-up as Versus once I started watching them play live. It helped that the two frontpersons of the band seemed loose and comfortable, chatting and joking around with the audience. It was like, oh yeah, this is Versus alright.

I ended up totally enjoying it (also, it was the first night I went out after getting swine flu, and I had a couple of beers and seemed to be healthy). They played a fair amount of new stuff and mostly earlier old material. It sounded good. The violin (and occasional keyboard) fit in better than I feared. Off the top of my head, I wouldn’t have remembered that Versus ever had any songs in the past with strings, but they played “Deep Red” and it sounded a lot better live than the old EP version, it actually was quite pretty. Versus were always pretty good at pulling off pretty songs amidst the harder indie rock. They did some other old songs like “Be-9,” “Circle,” and “Crazy” (by request). When somebody shouted out for “Morning Glory,” Fontaine commented that, since Ed didn’t play on those later records, he didn’t know them, but then they went ahead and did a pretty decent version of it for the encore.

I couldn’t entirely make up my mind about the new line-up and the new material… it will take me a while to decide what I think. It was totally good, but I kind of missed the latter-era line-up with Patrick and James. Richard is a brilliant guitarist but I think having James on guitar added a lot of depth… I have clear memories of the first time I saw Versus (this was the 3-brother line-up) and watching James play the lead riff on “Glitter of Love.” On the other hand it was interesting to hear how the violin integrated with the band; also the last Versus album, Hurrah, was not that great. Basically, I’m willing to let this new form of Versus grow on me if they stick around long enough. I would absolutely go see them again (contemplating whether they are worth trips to New York for) and I’m looking forward to the album.

At a certain point the quartet on stage was joined by a young chap on guitar (I believe they called him “Chris” but this was almost a month ago so I’m not certain) and Fontaine asked how many of us in the audience had a copy of The Stars Are Insane and proceeded to explain that Chris was the little kid in the album art. Crazy! So then my friends asked me whether or not that was Richard and Fontaine’s kid and I was like “I don’t even think they are a couple! he is maybe a nephew or something?” But it made me think. All those years of listening to this band, I never really even thought about their personal lives and relationships. Their lyrics are full of relationship sagas, but I never got the sense those stories were about each other. I honestly have no idea if they ever were/are a couple. How indie rock — boys and girls singing together and I barely ever even thought about them doing anything more than music with each other… though maybe this is due to my long-standing crush on Fontaine Toups.

Speaking of indie rock, Fontaine and Richard told an amusing story about the first time they played in DC, that Jenny Toomey got them to play a show at dc space with a bunch of “indie rock” bands, and that they didn’t know what indie rock was, or that they themselves might be indie rock. They said the indie rock kids terrified them. And that before they knew about indie rock, they thought they were “post-punk.” Ha.

Anyway I am glad that Versus is back in some form. As I get old and cranky, I’m falling into the typical old-person pattern of liking music from when I was 19 way more than I like the music of 19-year-olds today. Whatever.

Opening up for Versus was Soft Power, Mary Timony’s new band. I was pretty interested in seeing them; they’ve played a number of times in town over the past year or so but I had never made it to any of their shows. I was really impressed by the last iteration of the Mary Timony Band (with Devin Ocampo and Chad Molter from Medications/Faraquet) and their album The Shapes We Make. Also I’d seen Mary Timony play several times before and always like her performances.

But I wasn’t totally sold by Soft Power. I liked it, but something seemed off. Partly it was something about the sound and the stage presence: Mary’s vocals didn’t sound right, and she and the other singer (I don’t know his name) were constantly trading guitars and basses. Something just wasn’t quite right. But I’m interested in hearing more: musically it sounded like it had pretty good potential, a continuing progression for an interesting musician. There aren’t a whole lot of woman guitarists/singers like Mary Timony — disappointingly few — and the world definitely needs more girls who can rock out on guitar and who listen to prog. (Again, this was a while back, but Mary asked the crowd something like, “would you rather go on tour with the Scorpions or with Yes?” and despite my definite shout-out in favor of the Scorpions she was like, “I would totally choose Yes.” Man, I love the Scorpions…)

I’ll give Soft Power another chance, too. This was a fun show, gratifyingly filling up the backstage, and a good way to end the year. Though I still wish I had known about that Grant Hart show.

I’ve seen lots of instrumental rock bands, of varying styles, and probably wouldn’t have thought of going to see Russian Circles last week, but a friend was really excited to see them, so I was amenable. I knew them a little bit — I mentally lump them in with bands like Red Sparowes as epic, serious-minded, metal-tinged instrumentalists. This seemed pretty accurate — the show was good but a little too earnest. The crowd was about 90% male (even real metal shows have more chicks), and mostly on the young side. This kind of music has a certain appeal (and I enjoyed it) but somehow it’s missing something. It was a fun but not transcendent show.

Basically I have a problem with bands that rely too heavily on tone and effect rather than on songs. Russian Circles were certainly not the worst in that category (opener Young Widows used a hell of a lot more effects pedals, but had better music to go with it). Obviously, tone matters; effects matter; it makes sense for musicians to spend a lot time, money and effort on getting the sound they want. But when the music is all about the tone, it just seems kinda pointless. I want my guitar-based music to be something that could be adapted to a crappy Sears-brand guitar/amp combo and still be recognizable.

I also had the feeling, an unusual one, that they could do with some vocals. I generally support instrumental music and think vocals are often redundant, but sometimes they can really add something. Russian Circles + an interesting singer could = Made Out of Babies which is a way more interesting band.

On the plus side, I have listened to Russian Circles before and never given much thought to their name. While watching them live, I found it appropriate — their songs are really carefully composed, often circling back to the beginning segments.

Anyway I am not hating on Russian Circles — they were pretty good. But I thought Young Widows were better. I didn’t really know this band but I was terrified before their set because they set up a massive array of amps… luckily some of them had hidden lamps inside instead of speakers. Young Widows were also guilty of being too effects-driven but they had actual songs that were heavy post-hardcore, maybe screamo… fun stuff! Intense! You can get a flavor of their sound at a video from a show a few days later seen here. They reminded me a little of Frodus who I saw earlier this year; I liked Frodus better but I might like the Widows more if I listened to them. I’ll give them a shot.

I wasn’t totally sure about going to see the Pixies — it was a show that violated a lot of my self-imposed guidelines, like “no more reunion shows” and “no more shows that cost more than 25 bucks or so” and “no more shows ever at Constitution Hall, the worst venue in the area to see rock and roll.”

But it turned out to be a great show (with the typical Constitution Hall caveat that it would have been a million times better at a place like the 930 Club or even an arena). The Pixies have been in the reunion-tour business for a few years now but there still seemed to be a lot of enthusiasm among the crowd, even though this second night of a two-night stand wasn’t close to sold-out. Their current tour features a full performance of their album Doolittle, including b-sides. The only other time I’ve seen one of these “play the whole album” deals was a Sonic Youth show in New York a couple years ago where they played Daydream Nation, which I pretty much have memorized note for note; I know Doolittle almost as well. I think these album-shows are ok, though it helps when the albums are nearly perfect. Doolittle is less than perfect but pretty amazing.

Before the band took the stage, they rather appropriately played four or five minutes of Un chien andalou on the screen. Then they played b-sides (best to get them out of the way) before kicking into “Debaser.” The set was pretty good — Doolittle has a good mix of classics and quirky weird songs (like “No. 13 Baby” and “La La Love You”). The only really flawed song on the album is “Silver” and luckily they ended it quickly before going to one of their very best songs, “Gouge Away.”

So the Doolittle set was great. But it was the stuff they played afterwards that really stood out. It included the only b-side that I recognized (the awesome “Into the White”) and then really got into gear with basically all the other good Pixies songs (mostly from Surfer Rosa).

The band even started doing showmanship-stuff like this pretty amusing bit during “Vamos” (did they do this back in the day?):

Overall it was a totally fun show. It was a bit disorienting, though. I mean, I wasn’t into the Pixies back in the day — I think I was just vaguely aware of them. I was slightly too young to yet be aware of underground music; I got into the Pixies during the ’90s via Nirvana, the Breeders, and alternative rock. Their music was always something historical — an obvious key influence on the bands I loved in high school, the link between ’80s college rock and ’90s alt-rock. Seeing them live was a time-warp experience, like seeing Nirvana or something. It has to do with their sound — unmistakable and extremely influential. Hundreds of bands in the ’90s sounded just like them. It was just strange to see the genuine article living and breathing, like a quartet of coelacanths flopping onto the stage of Constitution Hall.

There are many categories of music that I like, but am only glancingly acquainted with: black metal, Nuggets-style psych, krautrock, truck-driving country, etc. One of those genres is Canadian indie pop from the oughts. There is this whole scene — a “broken” “social” scene, I guess — that I find pretty good but don’t know that much about. It has never been my focus, and I have never really listened to Stars and wouldn’t have thought of going to see Amy Millan except that a friend strongly recommended I tag along.

And it turned out to be worth seeing. We made it in time to see one band before Millan’s band, and it was called Bahamas and consisted of one guy (Afie Jurvanen) on guitar and one guy playing drums (who looked kinda familiar…). They were ok… I liked them begrudgingly. Or rather, I liked the drummer (who also played keyboard/xylophone simultaneously on one song) and I liked the way Jurvanen played guitar. The begrudging part was that this was not my kind of music, usually. It was that pretty, romantic, nonsense that leaves teenage girls’ hearts all a-flutter. Every now and then I like that kind of thing but I can’t really handle the lyrics that are all about love and drama.

But the dude won me over a little bit, I will admit. He was goofy and charming, he sounded all Canadian and used the word “hosers,” and I finally laughed at one of his dumb jokes when he said something like, “if you liked that song, you’ll love this one: it’s the exact same chords.” To close his set he did a cover of “Purple Rain” and I was horrified at first, but again, halfway won over before the end.

Amy Millan was pretty good, too. I didn’t really know what to expect and it turned out to be a pleasant kind of country-tinged pop complete with a lot of banjo, mandolin, lap steel guitar, and trombone (I guess? I am bad at ID’ing brass instruments). It was, as she said, good Sunday night music.

The band was quite good, seldom veering far into rock territory, and occasionally letting a little bluegrass out. Again, this isn’t really my favorite music but I liked it. Amy Millan’s voice was really strong and the band was fun to watch. They seemed like quintessential Canucks: polite, restrained folk who refer to the temperature in Celsius.

Worth checking out, especially on a night like last night where nobody wanted to party, they just wanted to hear some nice music before heading home to bed.

Here’s a flickr photo set from the show, and a video of a song called “Losin’ You”:

I went to DC9 last Wednesday on a bit of a lark to see Fuck Buttons. I had seen them before, about a year ago, opening for Mogwai, and thought their music was pretty great, and had downloaded a copy of their album Street Horrrsing which was also pretty good. But it isn’t like they really do anything that you can watch, other than turn knobs and stuff, so I didn’t really need to see them live again. But anyhow I ended up enjoying it.

It was a pretty sizable crowd for a Wednesday night — amazing what a little Pitchfork hype will do. A friend and I rolled upstairs in time to catch most of Growing, the openers. I’d heard them a little before but didn’t have a strong impression about them in advance; they turned out to be awesome live. I was pretty impressed, it was a great performance of sort-of electronic noise music with some live instrumentation and even bursts of vocals. It was like a band performing at the coolest house party you could ever imagine, with beautiful strangers dancing all night. Like rave music, but much better. But the crowd at DC9 seemed strangely unmoved. I could hardly restrain myself from dancing and I am not the dancing kind… I am not sure what was up with all the young hipsters who weren’t up for shakin’ it.

I went ahead and bought a CD by Growing but wasn’t very impressed by it (bland ambient techno stuff). Still, I’d check them out again sometime, especially somewhere a little more club and a little less rock. Maybe I can hire them to perform and dj when I am a socialite having crazy hip parties someday…

Here’s a flickr photo of Growing by Mehan Jayasuriya:

The crowd seemed more enthused for Fuck Buttons, and the “performance” was pretty good. They are an interesting band and were worth the price of admission. I find their brand of music impressive but, again, there isn’t really anything to watch. That’s cool… I am just glad to see loud noise getting some respect. When I have my doubts about the state of (underground) pop music in 2009, I just have to remind myself that a duo named Fuck Buttons can draw a large crowd to listen to experimental electronica.

Check this out — you can download basically the whole performance that night from the excellent website disclosed mp3! Rad!

And here is another photo stolen from Jayasuriya, in case you want to see what these guys look like:

[updated 12/11/09]

There was a lot of stuff going on last Friday, an odd All-Hallow’s-Eve-Eve where some people were celebrating Halloween and some were not. But I wanted to check out Office of Future Plans, the newest project of J. Robbins, playing with Darren Zentek and a couple other guys.

This makes, let’s see, the fourth Robbins band I’ve seen play live, having seen Jawbox, Burning Airlines, and Channels once apiece. So now I’m wishing I’d been a little more sober, since based on the precedents, I’ll likely never see the Office of Future Plans again. Possibly I will never even be able to remember their unwieldy name in the future. Curse those Schlitz-and-shot combos at the Red Derby!

Anyway there was a solid DC line-up in this Buddyhead-affiliated show, but I was too busy to catch it all. I wouldn’t have minded seeing Imperial China again since I liked them the last time.

The band sounded good and Robbins’ singing was likable as ever. The sound was dense compared to Channels or Burning Airlines, with two guitars with guitar, bass, and cello, but overall it was also pretty pop-sounding. A friend that I dragged along compared them to Guided by Voices and once he mentioned it, I couldn’t help noticing the similarity. In ’90s terms, it was a little more “indie rock” and a little less “post-hardcore” than Robbins’ work in the past, though I guess those categorizations were pretty meaningless even 15 years ago.

I liked it, the bands were wearing goofy costumes, and I was pretty satisfied. Then at the end they startled me by breaking into Jawbox’s “Savory”! Unexpected! Maybe this was to make up for the Jawbox–Jimmy Fallon performance that isn’t gonna happen. It was pretty great and I was singing along, reliving hazy 120 Minutes memories.

I wanted to snap some pictures but my stupid phone has some annoying problem where I can’t clear the memory so I couldn’t do it. Searching the web I can’t find pictures or video (and it wasn’t too crowded of a show) but here is another quick review. I’ll keep my eyes open for more stuff from OoFP, awkward band name and all.

Stuck around briefly for Caverns — I’ve seen them before too and like them alright, though they were heavier than I remembered. But had places to go, things to see, drinks to consume. Wish there’d been a bigger crowd for a pretty great local line-up… I tried…

***

PS check out this excellent interview with J. Robbins at buddyhead.

***

Update:

Thanks to Gordon from the band, and to Alexis, for commenting below. I was embarrassed to reply to them because my own stupid drunk memories of the show totally skipped over the fact that there was cello (corrected above). You can see it pretty obviously in this video, in which you can also see me bopping my big head right in front of the camera. Of course when I saw the video, I was like “oh yeah! I remember the cello!” but feel totally dumb to have forgotten. But did they change their instruments at some point? I could have sworn there were parts with two guitars…

Anyway check out this excellent video:

At a Wednesday-night happy hour with a couple friends, debating whether to do prosaic things like go to our respective homes and do laundry, I mentioned that I was mildly interested in going to the Black Cat to see Pinback and Obits. Thanks to one of those friend’s recent obsession with Hot Snakes (whose singer Rick Froberg now heads Obits) and the general sense that it was a good night to abandon prosaism, we headed over in time to catch most of Obits and all of Pinback. It was a good choice.

I saw Obits about six months ago and thought they were even better this time. The sound on the mainstage seemed a little off but they put on a great performance… a little snarlier and punkier than the last time. I’m a big fan of old dudes rocking hard and I have been listening to Obits off and on this year and like them a lot. I still don’t think they are quite as good as Hot Snakes but they might be approaching the same level.

I expected Obits to be good and they delivered. But I had pretty low expectations for Pinback. I went through a Pinback phase a few years back (and I really love the album Summer in Abbadon) but I kind of lost interest in them over time. I tried to see them one or twice and never quite made it, but I downloaded some live stuff by them and found it pretty weak. Somehow I picked up the idea that Pinback were just not a very good live band. I still liked their music but gradually lost most interest in ever seeing them live.

But I was not gonna miss them once I already paid for the ticket. And I was impressed! They sounded pretty great. For all the times I listened to Abbadon and the lesser amount of time I’ve listened to other stuff by them, I never had a clear sense that Rob Crow and Armistead Smith were such equal partners in the singing and frontmanship; I’d always thought Crow was the main dude. So I was startled to find that I couldn’t figure out which one he was… their voices are very similar. (Aside: though I wouldn’t recognize him, I saw Rob Crow perform once before, many eons ago, when Physics played at the Kalorama House… ancient history indeed.)

Here they are doing “Sender”:

I do feel that Pinback is a little too pretty, a little too restrained. To a certain extent, it’s indie rock-lite, background make-out music for hipsters. But I still kinda love it. And they wrote one of my all-time favorite lyrics, as I’ve mentioned before, with “I miss you, not in a Slint way, but I miss you.” After they sang that bit (from “A.F.K.”) I was ready to leave, satisfied. Thanks, Pinback! Sorry I doubted you! I will have to figure out what live stuff of theirs I downloaded in the past and replace it with something new.

Here’s a Pinback photo via last.fm/flickr: