Noise Rock | the finest kiss

Weekend On a Monday

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Toby

Weekend and Talk Normal at the Crocodile, Seattle | 26 September 2011

I’m not sure why this show was booked at the Crocodile. With only a handful of people showing up to see Weekend and Talk Normal, someone had to lose money. This show would have been much better for all in involved in a smaller place like the Comet, Lo-Fi, or Sunset. At any of those places, it would have seemed like enough people showed up to see them. At the Crocodile it was conspicuously empty. This didn’t seem to phase either band in the slightest. Weekend filed on stage, switched on their red lights and smoke machine, turned up the bass amp to 11 and proceeded to pummel all 25 of us.

Sometimes a band pummels in the right way and sometimes it’s not. I wanted San Francisco’s Weekend to do it the right way. Their records do it correctly, balancing just the right amount of noise and melody, but Monday at the Crocodile it was mostly noise devoid of any melody. Weekend feature bass guitar prominently in all of their songs, but live it overpowered everything. I moved around to see if it was where I was standing (there was a lot of space to move around), but the mix was the same. The guy would sing, but you couldn’t hear it. The other guy would play guitar but you could barely hear it. Everything was overwhelmed by out of control bass. Last year at the Vera Project they seemed to have a better handle on their live sound, or maybe I just had higher expectations for them the second time around. Their new Red EP is a leap forward for them. The songs are less buried and a more nuanced atmosphere is created than on their album from last year. Hell, you could even dance to Hazel. Any nuance flew out the window Monday and it was replaced by sheer volume, making it hard to tell one song from another. Kind of a bummer.
stream: Weekend – Hazel

Openers and tourmates Talk Normal come from Brooklyn and can trace their roots to their city’s rich No Wave past. The duo of drums and guitar created a respectable cacophony in the cavernous Crocodile. Screwdrivers were insterted into the necks of guitars and drums were pounded in rhythmic patterns. Not being a conoseur of No Wave, I can only assume that this made for a great set.
stream: Talk Normal – Lone General

Nothing’s Shocking

Posted on November 24, 2008 by Toby

Deerhunter and Times New Viking at Neumo’s, Seattle | 21 November 2008

It’s good to see that some shoegaze is still popular. Neumo’s was sold out Friday night for Deerhunter, it just goes to show if you have a flamboyant front man, one that is in your face gay, accidentally leaks his own albums, and regularly post songs and other stuff on his own blog, everyone is more apt to sit up and pay attention. And pay attention is what everyone did at Neumo’s this night. The band came on stage to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, no words uttered an no irony invoked even though one could have mistaken this for the Hold Steady gig down the road at the Showbox the same night. With their third album Microcastle just released last month, but leaked all the way back in May of this year, the band seem to be gaining popularity with each release. Microcastle is more straightforward and hook laden than it’s predecessors offering up pop jems like Never Stops, Agoraphobia, and Little Kids, while retaining it’s blissful haze of guitar effects and general feel of drone and haze that can easily hypnotize you into some kind of ethereal netherworld.

Cox and his band offered few words, actually none, but let their music do the talking. Starting with their epic Cryptograms, the band sounded great, with three guitars going at once, it was pretty much a shoegazer dream show. There were the lengthy epics like the afore mentioned Cryptograms the short sharp pop of Never Stops and lullabies like the Julie Cruise like Microcastle. After every song I was expecting Cox to begin one of his funny stories or just shock us with something, but he uttered nothing. He smiled graciously and the band continued to build their hazy, beautifully spell upon the crowd. Bassist Josh Fauver, who plays with a permanent grin and looks like he’s having a better time than anyone else once uttered hello Seattle, but that was it. The band continued their magic even including Vox Celest and Calvary Scars from the Microcastle bonus disc.

When I saw the Bradford Cox offshoot Atlas Sound back in March, he seemed to relish the between song banter, often to hilarious effect, but last night it was all business. Or at least that’s what I thought. As the band came back out for their encore Cox finally grabbed the mic to say a few words. And like the first time I found out that Liz Frasier talks like sailor, Cox juxtaposed Deerhunter’s dreamlike music with his blunt funny words. Someone yelled out a high school in Georgia, and Cox responded that he went to a rival school and that his school’s football team kicked their ass a few times. Then he deadpans that he didn’t have much interest in football back then, he was more interested in sucking dicks and doing LSD. No spells were broken though, how could they be when they played Agoraphobia, Heatherwood and Twilight at Carbon Lake for the encore?

mp3: Deerhunter – Never Stops (from Microcastle)

Columbus, Ohio noisnicks, Times New Viking who graced this same stage as headliners back in June, albeit to a much smaller crowd are opening for Deerhunter on the current tour. The beginning of their set was complicated by what seemed like their attempt to build a brick house on stage. A number of bricks were ported up to the stage in unsuccessful attempts to secure Adam Elliot’s drums. Once they got enough bricks up there, the band seemed to settle into their noisy whiteout rock. Call and Respond, anew song off their latest single on Matador especially stood out with an almost Stereolab-like drone, but much noisier.

mp3: Times New Viking – Call and Respond (from the Stay Awake single)

More photos from the evening including Deerhunter’s setlist can be found over at my flickr.

Bringing the Noise

Posted on October 11, 2008 by Toby

Thee Oh Sees and the Intelligence at the Sunset Tavern, Seattle | 9 October 2008

Not having seen Thee Oh Sees or the Intelligencebefore I wasn’t sure what to expect. Well I sorta new what to expect, lots of white noise drenched pop songs. The Intelligence’s new album Deuteronomy is leaps and bounds ahead of their previous two with clearer production and better songs, but the band stick with their noisy punk rock roots only delivering them more effectively. The Oh Sees new album, the lengthy titled The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night In is sonic trip drenched in loads of echo and reverb with songs that are part Brian Jonestown Masacre, part Raveonettes and but mostly Cramps.

So when I saw two drum sets being set up for what I thought was to be Intelligence I was intrigued. In my world, two drummers is almost always a cool thing. Then I saw John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees setting up his amps and tuning his twelve string guitar so I figured that the schedule had been switched up to let the hometown Intelligence headline. Then I saw Lars Finberg of the Intelligence on the other side of the stage with his twelve string. Not knowing what to think at this point, I figured that since these two guys are friends and their bands having just put out a split 12″ (on mtn st mtnand it’s sold out already), that Dwyer was maybe going to play with Intelligence for their set. I was totally wrong, and actually a little confused when both Thee Oh Sees and Intelligence bounded on the tiny Sunset Tavern stage. What exactly did Thee Oh Sees and the Intelligence have in store?

With Thee Oh Sees on the A-side and Intelligence on the B-side, the bands ended up playing the entire show like the split release they just put out. Thee Oh Sees would do a song and then the Intelligence’s, and that’s how it went for the whole set back and forth with various members of each band joining in the other’s song here and there. At one point after Thee Oh Sees one of their songs, Finberg says, I hope you liked that song and then the Intelligence proceed to play the same song. That song, Block of Ice, was written by Dwyer and is on both Thee Oh Sees record as the new Intelligence record. You might think delivering a set like this would feel a little disjointed, but these two bands have such similar sounds that it really worked. First there are the obvious similarities like Dwyer and Finberg’s twelve string guitars and apparent disdain for the bass guitar. Both bass players (I shouldn’t call them that, they were really guitarists) were playing bass lines on regular guitars. Though they do have a similar sound aesthetic, the bands are easily distinguishable from one another. Thee Oh Sees have with their Cramps fetish and psychedelic garage rockabilly tempered with sunny west coast melodies courtesy Brigid Dawson. The Intelligence verge more towards a Dragnet and Grotesque era Fallschool of angular garage rock with a heavy dose the weirdness exhibited Ohio noiseniks Braniac. Both bands looked like they were having a blast doing their ping pong set. Dwyer was always making weird facial expressions, and manhandling his guitar with Chuck Berry poses. Finberg, when he sings has this infectious grin his face that belies the artiness of their sound. There was also some lite hearted jabbing at one another with Finberg flipping his guitar over displaying the words ‘Fuck You’ and gesturing at Thee Oh Sees. The double decker set really worked, with the Sunset crowd totally digging both bands, cheering them on as if they were in a race.

I got there early enough to catch the openers. The first band was Love Tan which is another project of Craig Chambers of the Lights. Love Tan is Chambers on guitar and vocals accompanied by drummer Matthew Ford who use to be in the Intelligence. It was a perfect fit for this treble heavy bill. Also caught Ty Segal who is a one man band from San Francisco. He played drums, guitar and sang all at once. I’m amazed by anyone that can do two things at once, Ty can do at least three.

mp3: Thee Oh Sees – Block of Ice (from The Master’s Bedroom Is Worth Spending a Night)

mp3: The Intelligence – Block of Ice (from Deuteronomy)

mp3: The Intelligence – Moon Beams (also from Deuteronomy)