District of Cacophony

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:

So I love the Raveonettes! They have to be one of my top favorite bands of the past decade or so. (Maybe I will make a list for the end of the decade… I imagine they might come in second behind Les Savy Fav.) I think their music is a perfect blend of pop music and noise — a combination that a lot of my favorite bands go for but rarely so smartly. They are not original at all but they have perfected a formula that has a long, hip, tradition dating back as far as the Velvet Underground. I always think that Raveonettes songs are basically prom themes for the hippest high school ever.

On the other hand, their live show doesn’t impress me as much as their albums. I’ve seen them a number of times, and the only time I was really blown away was the the first time I saw them as an “electric duo.” Their full band shows have been a little too noisy, and they have weird effects and backing tracks that really detract from their performances (see also: The Kills, who were far worse at the same offense). It’s a bit frustrating, because Sune Rose Wagner is a brilliant guitarist and even Sharin Foo is a solid musical performer.

But I actually think they were pretty great at the 930 Club on a miserably cold, rainy Friday night. Sune and Sharin were actually right behind me in line when I entered the club; the person checking IDs asked for theirs and they were like, “we don’t have them with us, we just have these badges” and they were allowed in. I sort of nodded at them; if we’d had time to chat I would’ve requested the only song on the new album that I really like, “Heart of Stone,” but they played it anyway, along with most (all?) of the new album.

Speaking of the new album, I am not all that crazy about it. It’s ok. I thought the previous one, Lust Lust Lust, was fantastic. The new one, In and Out of Control, is too polished and pop-sounding. The obvious single, “Last Dance,” sounds like it could be sung by Garbage or maybe M83. It’s a decent song but I don’t think it plays to their strengths of dark mysterious songs with reverb-laden western swing riffs. Then there is a super annoying song called “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed).” So it will not go down as my favorite Raveonettes record. It’s not bad though.

Despite some technical problems (sigh… backing tracks…) I think the sound was really good at the club, with the vocals pretty clear despite the high-volume noise. I was able to give up my resentment at the drum tracks and sound effects and just enjoy the performance. It was heavy on the new album with a few songs from Lust and very few old songs and I thought it was fun all around. The bassist and drummer were solid and there were a couple new songs that sounded better live than on the record (again, I think the album is too polished).

I’m not sure what the solution is to the backing-track “problem.” A keyboard player? A person sitting on stage with a laptop? There is no satisfactory way to do it… I think the only awesome thing to do is have a couple more members of the band who play unexpected instruments like trumpets and such, adapting laptop parts to actual instruments. But it is a lot cheaper to just play a backing track and I know the economics of the music industry, including niche bands like the Raveonettes.

Here’s a song from Lust Lust Lust, “Ally Walk With Me”:

I saw about half the set by openers, The Black Angels. I knew this band a bit — a few years ago I gave a decent listen to them via the internet, and I kind of liked their song “Black Grease” (the song that they were playing when I got inside the club), but there are so many similar bands that I wasn’t that interested in seeing them and found them pretty unremarkable. The last song really ruined their set for me, a totally retro psychedelic song that sounded straight out of 1970. I like psychedelia to an extent but not such a retread… I was left thinking of those awesome Sleater-Kinney lines about “you come around sounding 1972 / you did nothing new with 1972 / where’s the ‘fuck you’ where’s the black and blue?” I’d rather see my old chums Dead Meadow or the pretty rad Warlocks than the Black Angels again.

Last Tuesday I was thinking of going to see Daniel Johnston but ended up joining some friends to see a band I knew nothing about, Phosphorescent.

They were a suitably bearded Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-South alt-country kind of band. I liked them at first — they reminded me of a better version of onetime DC hipster/country band Canyon and I was totally digging the steel guitar sound. (I never tire of quoting John Peel saying that “if God played an instrument it would be the steel guitar.”)

I found a youtube vid below — dark but you get the idea:

Around mid-set, though, the band started to lose me. They did a bunch of Willie Nelson covers, which is fine and all, I dig Willie. But they were less interesting than the early part of the set.

When the singer (the internet tells me he is named Matthew Houck) came back for an encore — a rarity on the Backstage at the ‘Cat — I’d had enough, and my friends and I left while he was still performing. Solo, he was repetitive and boring. It was like a vastly inferior version of Songs: Ohia. I am not saying I could do better, but I have seen enough weepy singers in my time that I knew it was time to bail.

Still I think these guys have potential; Houck had a nice voice for the style of music the band played. But more country atmosphere, dude, and less solo singer/songwriter stuff!

I’ve been wanting to check out Buildings, a.k.a. BLDGS, for a while, so was pleased to have the chance to check them out at Haydee’s Restaurant in Mt. Pleasant — close enough to home that I could make it on a banged-up knee that has been keeping me away from shows.

Plus at Haydee’s you can sit and drink mediocre margaritas. You don’t get margaritas at the Black Cat.

I first heard about Buildings sometime several months ago, maybe in the spring, and when I listened to them online I was quite impressed. They play good instrumental rock, some of it pretty catchy, and it’s more original than you’d think. Based on their recordings (what I’ve heard of them, anyway) I think they are one of the most interesting bands around DC right now — accessible enough to keep it in the realm of pop music rather than experimental music, but experimental enough to make it exciting.

Anyway never having seen them, I had the impression they were gonna be the opening band at Haydee’s, on a bill with a band called Make a Rising, and was a little disconcerted when the first band started out with chanting. I was all like, this has to be the other band, right? but wasn’t sure for a while. Make a Rising were decent, though. They sounded to me like a cross between Deerhoof and Tortoise (do tortoises have hoofs?). They wore costumes (someone at my table asked, “what’s that Donnie Darko guy playing?”) and sounded pretty good, occasionally incorporating some unusual instruments into the mix.

Haydee’s was a strange venue to see a rock show and it was kind of weird to be sitting at a table a ways back from the band, drinking and eating tortilla chips during a psychedelic rock performance. I think both bands would have been more interesting in a different venue.

By the time Buildings went on it was getting late and I was getting deeper into the margaritas, but they did a good job of living up to my fairly high expectations. They played in front of a goofy video projection that reminded me of watching one of those video-game tv channels, or an episode of Liquid Television. You can see it in this bad cell phone snap:

Hope these guys achieve some success, I’ll try to spread the word and support them when I can. The friends I took to Haydee’s seemed to enjoy the show. I was wondering if they would have merch for sale — their new EP is on sale via iTunes but I never buy anything from iTunes normally. Maybe I’ll have to break down. Anyway go check them out — here is their myspace.

So I think S PRCSS are pretty great. Last time I saw them I compared them to Lungfish. This time they also reminded me a little of Fugazi, what with the two guitarist/singer line-up. It is fun to see bald dudes playing jagged post-hardcore again. I have been waiting forever for a renaissance of this kind of music and I can’t wait to hear their next album.

I feel bad that I missed opener Hume. I have been wanting to see them and my friends told me they were good. I am screwing things up at the Black Cat lately, the shows are going on earlier than I expect. Maybe it’s just the backstage that starts fairly early? I swear I will try to see Hume soon. Because I think they are part of something good.

S PRCSS is sort of a band from nowhere at this point, DC/New York/elsewhere? So it is a stretch to call them a DC band. But I think they — along with Hume — are part of a pretty exciting time in local music. It seems to me that sometime in the early oughts the local music scene got super boring. Partly this has to do with me getting older and out of touch, and also I left the city for a while there and didn’t know what was happening. But. In the late-’90s to turn-of-the-millennium, here were some of the local bands playing around town: Fugazi, The Dismemberment Plan, Ted Leo, Burning Airlines, Flin Flon, The Make Up, Faraquet, Dead Meadow, Quix*o*tic, Crom-Tech/Orthrelm, Frodus. There were even lesser bands like Canyon, Pines of Nowhere, Bluetip, El Guapo, Q and Not U, the Rondelles. It was pretty astonishing. DC has a reputation for its music scene of the ’80s and early ’90s but I think the late ’90s were also fantastic.

By, say, 2005, though, what did we have? Medications. Edie Sedgwick. A few other leftovers from the ’90s. Mary Timony and Bob Mould moved to town. But the young crop of indie bands just never impressed me at all. Lots of boring post-Pitchfork, post-Postal Service, earnest indie bands. It felt like indie music appropriate for LNS-style socialites, not a real scene. Of course this is my own fault as much as anyone’s — nobody was holding me back from doing more with my own modest musical talent.

Luckily, though, it feels like things are picking up, and that other people are not being as lazy as me. There are bands like Hume and Imperial China and BLDNGS and semi-local bands like S PRCSS going strong. There is a thriving experimental scene that is spilling over into interesting rock music. I’ve really been digging the folks at Sockets Records and highly recommend their stuff. There is still a bit of a Dischord-related scene (I still want to hear the new Aquarium songs). Frodus is back together. It’s exciting!

I don’t want to go back to the past, I just want a reason to support local musicians again. These are the folks doing it…