Friday, Sept. 12, 2008 | 07:07
adventures in modern music 2008 nights 1 and 2
night one:
paul metzger played a 21-string banjo. i'm not sure whether he played songs or improvised, but he played the full thirty minutes they gave him. even the bar got quiet. after him was these are powers, who were good enough i got their cd. i was thinking you'd like their atmospheric dance-rock, but now i'm not sure. it's more like the slits with a bunch more effects and a couple drum machines. and less intelligible vocals. it was emotional and cathartic, but i don't know what it was about. the third band, tussle, was pretty funky. two drummers and two guys making noise with keyboards and stuff. i danced, kinda. i felt very self-conscious about it because by that time not many people were left.
night two:
the show last night was more rocking, but still out there. it opened with an electric volin player looping and distorting her parts to build layered, textured drones and noise. it was pretty cool. then came a rock band from oklahoma, colourmusic. at first i was unimpressed. here's another bland updating the 60's rock sound, i've heard this before and the singer has a whiny voice. gradually, though, i came to feel that while they weren't necessarily original, they did what they did well, and i really liked some of their songs. i ended up getting their cd after the show. hey, the cover's orange, and the band's color scheme is white and orange. what can i do? after them was evangelista, carla bozulich's band. i saw her open for wilco five or six years ago when she was touring her cover of willie nelson's "redheaded stranger" album. she brings this haunting atmosphere to her music, though last night was less country and much more art and noise. a lot of sporadic percussion (mostly rims, cymbals, and other metal objects placed on the drums), droning violin (the same woman who opened), keyboard distortion, howling bass and her wailing voice. sometimes she threw in a little textural guitar, but after she broke a string and cut her hand she did a song just her and the keyboards. that was haunting. the only problem was the quiet moments, when people at the bar keep talking and it undermines the atmosphere. (it was so bad i dreamt up a big "fuck you" performance for them, but that'll have to wait.) after evangelista was black moth super rainbow. this is a five-piece neo-psychedelic band. all the vocals go through a vocoder and are heavily distorted, while the rest is two keyboards, drums, bass, and guitar/banjo. did i say five? that's six people. i think i saw their photo somewhere with only five. the picture on the back of colourmusic's album has five guys, but only four showed on stage. black moth super rainbow have a solid groove and really sweet keyboard lines. they don't sound tied to the sixties the way colourmusic did, but they clearly owe a debt to the spacerock explorers back then. they had "troll 2" projected across the stage and screens behind them. i couldn't help but get lost in their sound, and it amazes me how they still affect me after hearing their songs for two years.
