Playing Saturday night (in alphabetical order)

Daylight Robbery’s more recent tunes find the band growing in subtlety and the use of space. The tunes on their recent 3-way split with Foreign Objects and Defect Defect sound as influenced by New Model Army as by X (for better or worse, Christine Wolf has a not-un-Exene-like timbre making the comparison difficult to avoid). Their whole discography is available at Daylight Robbery’s bandcamp. Note: The Daylight Robbery that released Cross Your Heart is different — some glam metal/hard rock act which I thought it was pretty dreadful. Beware.

Libyans employ hardcore tempos, guitar parts that aren’t the least bit cookie cutter (and afford more breathing room than most hardcore) and gloriously trashy drum sounds. Aces. (check ‘em out on Spotify)

Pet Milk sound like they wore out records by The Primitives and maybe Velocity Girl or Heavenly. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that as far as I’m concerned. The super-peppy “I Don’t Love Anyone” is especially nice, and how could I fail to love a band with a song called “Husker Dudes”? Hear it all at Pet Milk bandcamp.

Population evoke several of the post-punk pioneers — Chameleons and Echo, particularly. But they’re weirder. “Heaven Can Help” has a keyboard part that almost seems to belong to a completely different song — and I kinda love that about it. Available at Population bandcamp.

Siamese Twins have me seriously intrigued. This Siamese Twins tumblr links to tunes that fair dare me not to mention The Cure in describing their pop hooks and gothy mood (not to mention the basslines). This Siamese Twins bandcamp features spastic, herky-jerky noise-rock that reminds me of Parts & Labor’s “Escapers”, Ho-Ag, or Hands on Heads (and doesn’t appear to have female members). Normally I’d conclude they are two different bands — but both sites mention the Ladyfest gig! And I like the band in both modes. (Maybe it really is two different bands, and one of the sites associates show dates automatically?)

Sick Fix answers a question I’ve been wondering about: would anyone ever tag a band fronted by (or even fetauring) a woman with my all-time least favorite genre label? (That’d be “powerviolence,” beating out “shitgaze” by a wide oogie margin.) Sick Fix proves the answer is yes, which makes me hate the term a teeny, tiny, infinitesimal bit less. Not nearly enough to apply it, of course. As far as I’m concerned, this is hardcore (and at that, a bit less mathy than the stuff that usually gets called the TermIWillNotUse).

This Is My Fist’s slightly retro punk sometimes remind more than a lil bit of The Avengers; Annie Saunders’ vocals frequently me of The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck. The split single with The Marked Men from a couple years back is particularly good (and streamable on Spotify).

Playing Sunday (in alphabetical order)

Ampere are, holy carp pond, brutal. Almost all of the songs on last year’s Like Shadows get in and do their damage in under 90 seconds. They’re not quite as dense as John Zorn’s Naked City, but not far off. Drummer Andy Skelly was in Wolves. Another reason to love this: so far as I can tell, Ampere have a woman as a musician and creative presence in the band — but not as a singer. Given that Ladyfest welcomes co-ed bands at all, I’m kinda delighted that Ladyfest is including bands of this ilk. (on Spotify)

Big Nils singer is Coco Gordon Moore. Right, that Coco Gordon Moore. She’s yelpy in a not un-Jemina Pearlish way; the band is a comparatively-straightforward-rhythm-section-supporting-seriously-anarchic-guitar affair. Mom and Dad should be proud. Check it out at Big Nils’ bandcamp.

Girlfriends include a dash of surf in their pop-punkish indie rock. I’m frequently a sucker for male/female harmony vocals, a device Girlfriends frequently employ. The new EP (streamable at Girlfriends bandcamp) sounds terrific.

Hilly Eye predates Amy Klein’s departure from Titus Andronicus; on record, at least, it’s a guitar/drum duo (with vocals from both Klein and collaborator Catherine Tung. Check it out at Hilly Eye’s bandcamp.

Honeysuck also evoke Be Your Own Pet. But Be Your Own Pet gone hardcore. You can stream their new release at Honeysuck’s bandcamp. Can’t find a source to buy the tracks so I can keep them forever and ever. Boo.

Slingshot Dakota are drum and guitar duo, not typical punk instrumentation, but even if they don’t necessarily sound punk qua punk, there’s a clear attitudinal kinship with more aggressive music. (It probably doesn’t hurt that Carly Comando’s voice is not dissimilar to Rainer Maria’s Caithlin De Marrais.) (Slingshot Dakota have one tune on the Are You with the Band? comp which I mentioned yesterday, you can check that out on Spotify. You can sample/buy their previous album Their Dreams Are Dead, But Ours is the Golden Ghost! at eMusic. And you can count me among the many eager to hear the upcoming Dark Hearts.)

Thick Shakes play garage-influenced music that is transmogrified into punk via the application of insane amounts of fuzz, overdrive, and other forms of distortion. This sort of thing often strikes me as too self-consciously retro, but this has an infectiously fun spirit. Also I definitely like the “umami” pun that named their debut record.( Thick Shakes are on bandcamp.)

Titfit are unabashedly riot grrl — you can tell they love their Bratmobile — with a pleasantly lwo-tech, slightly garage-y vibe. Titfit bandcamp.

Playing Friday (in alphabetical order)
Beautiful Weekend don’t make it easy to preview their music.

Foreign Objects play short, hard-hitting punk tunes that are often quite catchy despite weird chords and screechy vocals. Nothing against “Words of War” but if you check ‘em out on Spotify you can hear “Pill Popper” and “One Made Two.” I think I played this record five times in the first 2 days after I bought it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Procession fit pretty comfortably in the shoegaze/dream pop genre. The “Fade” ep sounds cheerfully lo-fi and is enlivened by some energetic drum work. Check it out at Procession’s bandcamp site.

Shepherdess features Hilken Mancini of Fuzzy and about a zillion other bands, also Emily Arkin formerly of The Operators. Their EP a few years back did a great tightrope walk between fierce and pretty. Very glad to hear they are not defunct and that new material is trickling out at Shepherdess’s bandcamp site. (You can also find Shepherdess’s self-titled EP at Spotify, although it’s jumbled up with a completely different artist of the same name.)

Shoppers specialize in super dense & noisy punk. If you dig Mutators, White Lung, or Nü Sensae this might be right up your alley. It is sure up mine. Their most recent album Silver Year is sold out, so the Feeble Minds label has a link to download it. Or you can stream all their releases at bandcamp. Caution: cover image may be NSFW

Waxahatchee is Katie Crutchfield’s solo acoustic project, but it ain’t no easy listening joint. I love her new record American Weekend, on which she continues to write songs that remind me in mood and quality of the late Elliott Smith. At times it’s so trebly and distorted that it’s a bit tough on the ears. But worth it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Playing Saturday afternoon (in alphabetical order)

Aye Nako first came to my notice by providing the lead track on Are You with the Band? the slamming compilation of mostly poppish female-led punk acts curated by Lauren Denitzio (formerly of The Measure (SA) and now of Worriers). Aye Nako’s five-song demo (available at AyeNako.org reveals some stylistic breadth: mostly it’s probably closer to indie rock than punk, but I’d almost call “Good Grief” hardcore. Definitely eager to hear more from these folks.

Cotton Candy is Mark (”needs no introduction”) Robinson and Evelyn Hurley (of Blast Off Country Style). Top Notch & First Rate is a crazy mix of indie rock, sound collages, and (usually faithful) recreations of DC-area radio ads from the 70’s. God knows what it’s like live. But I’m sure curious. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Tunabunny are from the noisier side of the lo-fi block of indie-rock street. Last year’s Minima Moralia was a huge leap beyond their self-titled debut — still with plenty of attitude, but with much more solid hooks, and vastly improved production — still lo-fi, but maybe harnessing the chaos instead of being overridden by it. (You can check it out on Spotify.)

Whore Paint’s “Menarchy” EP from last year is dark, angry, and a little murky (maybe by design, maybe by budget. But I think on balance it works). “Amen” drops the tempo considerably; “Second Shift” reminds me obliquely of Rid of Me-era PJ Harvey, if PJ Harvey had been in a hardcore band. The band experiments quite a bit with putting space between the noise, which is promising. (on Spotify)

• Carrie Bradley, of Ed’s Redeeming Qualities, 100 Watt Smile, and um, some other band, on violin
• Sam Davol, of The Magnetic Fields, on bass viol (I think?) and percussion
• Claudia Gonson, of The Magnetic Fields, on keys, drums, and vocals
• Michael Hearst of One Ring Zero on guitar and theremin
• Hannah Marcus on keys and vocals
• Rick Moody, of literary fame, on guitar and vocals

Bill Janovitz also joined Donelly for a pair of encore tunes.
The set list spanned the range of Donelly’s career with the Throwing Muses, Belly, and as a solo artist, and featured several selections from an upcoming (o frubjous day!) album of collaborations with several of the participants. Among the many highlights for me:

• Rick Moody (who, it must be said, sounded throughout more like a guitarist and singer who happens to write books than the other way ’round) taking his hat off to sing along on “Feed the Tree”
• Getting to hear “Untogether,” maybe my favorite Donelly song so far and in my opinion one of the most devastating addiction songs I’ve heard, albeit in a slightly jokey rendition. Moody’s joy at geting to sing on this one was palpable
• A mildly anarchic romp through “Not Too Soon” (this was not a assemblage you’d accuse of being over-rehearsed; there were a lot of music stands on stage and a few rough moments. But for me, hearing good and attentive musicians stumble a tiny bit is an all-too-rare thrill: they compensate and cohere where lesser players would veer of the rails entirely.)
• A version of “Red” reclaimed from the unsatisfying production of Belly’s King
• Donelly’s duo performance with Janovitz of her heartbreaking, almost Patsy Cline-like, “After Your Party”

I listened to the Neutral Milk Hotel albums a lot, but not so much in recent years. I felt like one of the few chumps there who couldn’t sing along with all the lyrics, even the really loopy ones. The audience mostly opted to double Mangum an octave lower; Jordan Hall has a very warm natural reverb, and it sounded pretty good. Mangum did some Q&A between songs, kinda like David Bazan does, which contributed to the intimate atmosphere. Spellbinding.

String quartet opener ACME (the American Contemporary Music Ensemble) treated us to a more-than-competent run through Satie’s Les Gymnopédies and an often stunning arrangement of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet, which I had somehow never encountered before. (In retrospect this seems odd; I can almost imagine one of my former band leaders sitting us all down and making us listen to it at tortilla point, or some such.) It’s odd-but-somehow-logical cadence has a clear structural kinship with Mangum’s cover choice for the evening, Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End,” (although Johnston’s tune is set in a more conventional time structure) and it’s certainly not hard to hear its influence in Mangum’s own work.

Then he brought up his brother Bob on electric guitar, and his two of his former bandmates in Scud Mountain Boys, Tom Shea on mandolin, and Stephen Desaulniers on electric bass (since Bob played some guitar in Scud Mountain Boys, it was very nearly a full reunion, but Pernice mentioned there’d been some recent discussion with original guitarist Bruce Tull about playing together again, too). Last night’s set was special in a way you don’t get to hear very often: both a little rough, and also spot-on. I don’t think the quick pre-song conversations about key and tempo were staged for the audience’s benefit, and there were a few audible blown cues — but the guys recovered from them really fast, and without a trace of tentativeness. Only band members who are really listening to each other can pull that off. Pernice was visibly laughing in the first chorus of Olivia Newton John’s “Please Mister Please” — which didn’t stop him from singing it like a heart wound was being reopened. And Desaulnier’s harmonies were just there in a way I wouldn’t expect after a 14-year hiatus. Magic.

In addition to being a fantastic writer, Pernice is also — back to baseball again! — a five-tool singer. He’s solid at the technical things rockers are not necessarily known for: intonation, breath control, mic technique — and he’s got compelling phrasing and often gut-wrenching (but critically understated, not oversold) emotional delivery, to boot. To my mind, Pernice and Ted Leo are at the top of the male indie-rock singing heap. So when I saw some singer-songwriter dude I never heard of getting set to open for Pernice, my first instinct was pity: “poor guy, he’s about to get schooled.” Only it turns out Paul Melançon is also a pretty great singer — killer pure tenor, an effortless upper register, gorgeous delivery and solid technique. He knocked Neil Finn’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” — by no means an easy song to sing — outta the flippin’ park. Basically after about 4 or 5 bars of his first number I’d decided to buy his latest disc, and after I stopped being too distracted by his voice to pay attention to the songs (and his wry patter), I was committed to picking up everything I could lay hands on.

Dept. of egregious naval gazing: The Lizard Lounge was one of the venues for my first date with she who is now my wife (my wife! I feel like that always needs an exclamation point) and the Scud Mountain Boys, in a weird but awesome bill with Jenny Toomey and Jale, were in the first handful of live shows I ever wrote about on the Internets. Danger Will Robinson! Creeping nostalgia!

Ed’s Redeeming Qualities themselves played two sets, the first short and a little shaky, the second longer and a little miraculous. A couple of decades and and a transgender experience notwithstanding, it felt a lot like the other Ed’s shows I’ve seen. The songs, obviously, are the same — their odd mix of warmth, humor, out and out creepiness, and elevating the banal through close observation is intact and, I’d argue, timeless. But their presence and performance were also remarkably congruent with my memories: gruff Neno, tossing out wry asides between, even during, songs; Dani (once Dan)’s slightly but endearingly wobbly tenor (um, meso soprano?) and remarkably anchoring ukulele; Carrie’s precise enunciation, odd but impeccable timing, and face-splitting grin — they were all there.

The crowd for the old-person-friendly 6pm show was dense, rapturously enthusiastic from what I could see, and provided some of the most on-key audience singing I’ve ever heard.

Hitchcock’s voice is holding up quite well. You can hear a bit more strain at the top of his register, but not much. Rock-solid timing has never been his strong suit, and the one-two punch of “no drummer” and “lots of frantic strumming” led to several noticable gaffes. Hitchcock, who seemed relaxed and in good humor throughout, joked that we were getting the “organic” version of the show, from which the mistakes would subsequently be excised by the professional film crew.

Since there was a professional film crew (one could imagine that there might be some sort of 25th-anniversary hoopla for I Often Dream of Trains in the works for next year…) quite a lot of attention was paid to visual presentation, with Robyn taking the stage as a backlit, top-hatted silhouette, and wearing a black-and-white polka-dotted shirt against which his black-and-white polka-dotted electric guitar almost disappeared.

Highlights for me included the haunting, weird, and beautiful “Flavour of Night,” and “I Used to Say I Love You,” one of Hitchcock’s most straightforward, sad, and incisive songs (I think its lines “But you were reluctant/Although I was so hot/Now I understand it/But back then I did not” is genius). The barbershop trio arrangement of “Uncorrected Personality Traits” was outstanding, as were the three-part harmonies on faux-country “Ye Sleeping Knights of Jesus” (with lyrics updated from Cold War anxieties to Global Warmng anxieites). (Hitchcock also revised “This Could Be the Day” to make it slightly less un-PC, or perhaps he just mumbled. Either way, I can’t say I blame him.)

My favorite of Hitchcock’s trademark loopy anecdotes involved the recent colonization of Boston, and the construction of Logan airport after several hundred planes had landed there. The introduction to “This Could Be the Day,” was also memorable, casting the song’s narrator as one of the “Mojave Shrimp,” waking to fornicate (with a passel of synonyms) after the arrival of the once-in-several-decades deluge.

But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in my own unrealistic expectations a bit.

Damn, I’m prescient. Original bassist Steve Michener was missed, especially on “Ron Klaus Wrecked His House,” “Hey! Mr. Liconoln,” and “Faith Healer,” tunes to which generally capable fill-in man Tommie could not quite bring the required subtlety. But on the whole September 2008 Dipper seemed more sure-footed than April 2008 Dipper. Bill Goffrier had a little trouble pacing his voice through the set, but saved plenty of vim and vigor for the encore (”You’re Not Patsy”). And, most promisingly, there was a new tune (”Joke,” according to Bill’s shirt) with the typical Dipper earmark: just when you think you’ve got it pinned down, it takes a sharp left turn without becoming an iota less catchy. As an added bonus, after all these years, I’m finally clear on who is Bill and who is Gary Waliek. Bill is on the left:

Big Dipper seemed to feel constrained by their set time, so we didn’t get to hear two of the songs on Bill’s shirt, “Meet the Witch” and “Guitar Named Desire.”

We did, however, get to hear: Mr. Woods, She’s Fetching, Loch Ness Monster, Wake Up the King, Lunar Module, “Joke,” Edith, Bony Knees of Nothing [Gary: Here's one from our bad album. Bill: He's cute, he's real cute], Hey! Mr. Lincoln, Ron Klaus Wrecked His House, All Going Out Together, Younger Bums, and a rousing earned-encore rendition of You’re Not Patsy:

Bill says “Oh, yeah!!”

I do, too.

Also, Bill said a word to me! It was “Hi.” I was struck dumb.

*

Boston Spaceships were really friggin’ good. It’s a little scary sometimes to watch Pollard: at times, he seemed like the incoherent rambling man you’d want not to sit next to on the bus. But he can still sing. And the band, critically, stayed a little less soused. There was a hellalotta beer on stage, but there was also some vitamin water.

Tommy Keene brought much rock and gave great guitar cord:

Jason Narducy brought much rock. But do not throw a beer at this man! He does not like it when you do that.

Chris Slusarenko and John Moen brought much rock too, but I didn’t manage to photograph them doing it very well. This is maybe a good time to mention that “Rat Trap” rocked so hard and so well I didn’t even recognize it.

Selected bits of Bob Pollard’s wisdom:

“I remember playing the ‘rat back in 1978″ (much laughter).

Much love was expressed for Dipper and Bill Goffrier’s moves, in particular “the circle,” but I didn’t capture it verbatim.

“That was fucking prog rock [mumble] Peter Gabriel. It moved me. I don’t give a shit what it did to you, but it moved me.”

“Drunk and tight — if you can do that, you’ve got it made.” Which is a good point to get heretical: I saw Guided by Voices only twice, and neither was a typical GbV experience; one was an outdoor festival with the classic lineup, and one was the co-headlining tour with Cheap Trick. But Boston Spaceships might be a better band than GbV. Moen’s an awesome drummer, Narducy kept up with him, and the guitar onslaught of Slusarenko and Keene was nigh onstoppable. So I felt a bit bad about this:

People were pretty much going apeshit all night, but the end of the first encore was “Game of Pricks” and everybody went really apeshit. (Incidentally, I do believe the club did not want the band to play a second encore — one of the few times I’ve seen the house lights go back down after coming all the way up.*) From there on out it was all GbV: A Salty Salute, Motor Away, [I think I forgot something here], Cut-Out Witch, and Tractor Rape Chain. And this band and this band’s material deserved better than to get the biggest response of the night for the other band’s songs. But here’s why I was going apeshit, in especial particular: because I could feel just how much Chris Slusarenko had dreamed of playing these very songs and how much he love playing them, and because I know how very much fun most of those songs are to play myself. So there’s that.

* It’s gotta be a bit of a double-edged sword to book Pollard into your club. You know your drink sales are gonna be a New Year’s Eve levels, but so are your cleanup requirements.

You like everything that comes out on SST
You like everything that comes out on 4AD
You like almost everything that comes out on Homestead
I LIKE EVERYTHING THAT I GET IN THE MAIL FOR FREE!
(How ’bout that)

That stanza inspired me to become a reviewer so I could get music in the mail for free. What I didn’t know is that Sturgeon’s Law most definitely applies to what you get in the mail for free; even it’s own mother couldn’t possibly like all of it.

Anyway, I really enjoyed Great Plains’ set. They were a touch sloppy in that kinda good bar band-y way, or maybe that was just the muddiness of the mix. (Whiny aside: I really wish I liked The Middle East better, but all but a handful of shows I’ve seen there have sounded like crap, and downstairs is often uncomfortably like a sweatlodge.) Front man Ron House was in fine voice, and everyone on stage looked like they were having a good time.

It’s been bugging me that I can’t remember if I saw Big Dipper twice or just once back in the day. I know I saw them in Baltimore touring Slam (with a seismograph on stage, and Young’s “Rocking in the Free World” in the set), but I kinda think I also saw them in DC between Craps and Slam. At at least one Dipper show I know I was completely transported into the magical state of pure enjoyment. Maybe it happens to you and maybe it doesn’t, but when a band really connects with me, I stop being aware of things like what’s in (or out) of tune with what, whether the tempos are steady, how good or bad the mix is, and anything else from the analytical side of my brain. My consciousness shuts down and I just love what’s happening.

That’s a very high bar to reach, so it shouldn’t surprise me that the 2008 Dipper failed to reach it. It was great just to see Steve Michener, Jeff Oliphant, Gary Waleik, and Bill Goffrier on stage together again. They looked like they were having a blast revisiting the wondeful songs they crafted, and that’s important. Waleik seemed to be struggling a bit to hit some of the notes, but maybe he just couldn’t hear himself. I was certainly frustrated with the mix, my wonderful girlfriend and I weren’t feeling well, and we didn’t stay through the end of the night.

But if they pull a “Mission of Burma”-style return to active duty (and I hope they do), I would love to see/hear them again when they have another few shows under their belt, hopefully in a better-sounding room, and when I’ve had a chance to rein in my own unrealistic expectations a bit.

I appreciated many of I’s songs better live than on record. The stripped-down chamber music arrangements (ukelele, acoustic guitar, cello, and voice) left Merritt’s sparkling melodies and incisive and often very funny lyrics naked rather than masking them with layers of overdubs. (A live album from The Magnetic Fields seems unlikely, but I’d pay a pretty penny for one, for sure.)

I love the latest Magnetic Fields album Distortion, which swathes Merrritt’s compositions with washes of feedback and trebly, compressed drums not-entirely-unlike Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy (given Merritt’s hearing impairment, it seems likely he’s made an album he himself can scarcely stand to hear). But I was definitely eager to hear the soft acoustic cores of Distortion’s tunes . Since my wonderful girlfriend loves The Magnetic Fields at least as much as I do, it was a cinch that we wanted to attend both shows.

I’m glad we did. The Valentine’s Day show was a slightly off night for The Magnetic Fields; Merritt was clearly feeling under the weather, and there was at least one notable timing flub. Still, it was pretty magnificent. The surprise for me was that vocalist Shirley Simms has joined the touring lineup. Her voice has a harsher upper range than Gonson’s (not unpleasantly so; her timbre reminds me a bit of Neko Case) that expanded The Magnetic Fields’ harmonic palette substantially. The setlist ranged through other Merritt projects, like the 6ths, the Future Bilble Heroes, and the Gothic Archies. I was delighted to hear the magnificent, brooding, and funny “Crows,” from the Gothic Archies’ The Vile Village.

The second night Merritt seemed more comfortable and in better humor; the band was tighter. There were only a handful of repeat songs, mostly from the new album. Simms’ showpiece, “Drive On, Driver” was one of them. With the noise stripped away, it’s evident what a sturdily-constructed country song it is. Unlike earlier country efforts like “Papa was a Rodeo,” there’s nothing especially quirky about its lyric; I can easily imagine some Nashville star having a big radio hit with it. On both nights we were treated to Merritt taking the lead vocal on “The Nun’s Litany,” presumably saving Simms’ from potential embarrassment and/or catcalls that might result if she reprised her album performance of the nigh-pornographic lyric.

The Interstellar Radio Company opened both sets with radio-style dramatizations of two short stories, Poe’s classic, “The Tell-Tale Heart” (for Valentine’s Day, natch) and under-appreciated SF writer Robert Sheckly’s “Ghost V.” Actor Adam Green’s high-key, twitchy style was well suited to both stories (I can believe playing Dracula’s Renfield is his long-time ambition) but despite bravura stomp-box work from Green to simulate dialogue with a remote party, it was sound-designer Matthew Beals who really stole the show. He seamlessly melded old-school radio broadcast techniques with the high-tech audio processing power of an onstage laptop to frequently stunning effect. He went basic and traditional for the grisly bits of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” inspiring a ripple of audible revulsion through the audience even though everyone could see how innocuous his actions were. “Ghost V,” with its several fantastic monsters and other worldly setting, gave Beals some room to really go nuts with the computer. Streams are available at the Interstellar Radio Company site, but you’ll miss the fun of seeing the props arrayed and wondering, “what on Earth are they going to use that for?” and you’ll miss being impressed by how much isn’t down to clever digital manipulation.