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M.Headphone (Trust me on the spelling and punctuation; I checked.) are playing when I arrive at O'Brien's. They're mostly pretty good, but they drive me nuts. I'm not entirely sure why--I usually like this sort of melodic/harmonic power-pop, and there's some great singing and good harmonies here. But there are also a few really sour harmonies and dissonant chords. (Which may be intentional, I suppose, but if so they don't really fit in with the rest of the music and sound a lot more like fuckups.) Mostly, though, there's just something annoyingly safe-sounding about it all. The guitar solos sound like they could be Dave Matthews. It's middle of the road. It bugs me. Near the end of their set, they mysteriously cover a Nirvana song, and it's like little kids playing dress-up.
Next are Broken Word. They are young and energetic. They play very skillfully. They sound like what you would get if you took all of heavy-rotation rock radio from 2-5 years ago and put it in a blender. There's a lot of Incubus in there, and a whole bunch of Staind, Disturbed, Korn, etc. Tidbits of Tool and A Perfect Circle go whizzing by. (Thank god they seem not to have caught up to The Darkness!) In a way, they're the perfect band, but I'm bored silly. (Except for the amusing game of spot-the-influences.)
Kudzu Wish are not boring. They're tight and punky, and their lead singer manages something that I've often seen attempted but rarely achieved: what he lacks in singing ability, he makes up for with his antics. It takes some seriously world-class antics to achieve this, but he's just an explosive bundle of energy from the moment he steps onstage until the end of their set. He twitches and jumps, spends more than half his time in the audience, climbs tables and other furniture, and spews a lot of entertainingly random patter between songs. He even sings a bit, though mostly he's just screaming along and making it really hard for me to hear what the guitars are doing. They're good when I can hear them, though. A fun set.
Not a lot of people stay for Tristan Da Cunha, which is a shame, but then again, I imagine they would have severely traumatized M.Headphone's fans. There is nothing safe about this band. They start their set with a brief exchange of tiny musical forays that add up to a kind of quiet, spare free jazz, before launching into the thoroughly weird "World of Rubber." Tonight they have a couple of brand new songs to debut, and--surprise!--I love them. When music is this ridiculously, mind-bendingly complicated and I hear it for the first time ever, I am swept up in this sense of awe, as I have no earthly clue what to expect from moment to moment and the music can just push me hither and thither, at its whim. Rich imagery, rhythms I can't even begin to figure out, and then--oh, look, a section in five. How simple and straightforward! It provides a nice opportunity to rest my brain. During the last song, Steve (normally the drummer, switched to guitar for a couple of songs) suddenly loses all guitar signal, and the way they deal with the technical issues is a show in itself. See Ernie shout suggestions, then get up and come around from behind the drums (while still hitting them!) to help him deal with it. Hear Brian vamp on the bass line, then wander off into a bass solo with gentle singing until the problem is fixed. Finally, witness their ability to drop back into the already-nigh-impossible song together and stay together through the end. Masterful!
