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I have been looking forward to this night for a while, and I am apparently not the only one. There is a substantial crowd here for 9:15 on a Wednesday when Clickers go on. I think this is the best set I've ever seen from them. The guitars come in dissonant and wild, but they range through pretty, delicate parts and effects-heavy thrum over the course of the set. The bass is sometimes jazzy, sometimes pounding, and perfectly mixed. The drums are urgent and fierce, and the whole bands zigs and zags and turns on a dime. The vocals are rather lost this evening, but that's the only shortcoming of an otherwise phenomenal set.
Night Rally can seemingly do just about anything. A three-piece, they manage to make it the case that there are always at least two different things going on that I want to pay attention to. With all the weirdness that they have on offer, shifting rhythms throughout long, oddly structured songs and consigning melody mostly to the bass while the guitar is all shimmery/chiming reverberations, it is perhaps the most surprising thing about them that their songs are really very good as songs, catchy and memorable and fun. The three of them split the vocal duties up, but Devyn commands the lion's share of attention. He's so fucking bizarre! His freaky semi-spoken parts and gorgeous falsetto are odd enough, but the mustache calisthenics and surreal between-songs patter push the whole Night Rally experience right over the top. WAY over the top.
How sad to have to follow that band. For me, I've gotta say, The Cignal just are not equal to the task. Part of it's just that I don't like synth-driven songs; Tom likens them to The Cure, and I can hear it a bit. The drummer is ambitious but not really steady, the guitars don't do a whole lot (they're leaving room for the keyboards), and the lead singer has a drunken, low-affect/low-melody style that I don't think works with this kind of music. The backing vocals are pretty strong, and the bass and guitars are very solid. And the keyboardist does do interesting things, but the songs are otherwise kind of boring.
The Bon Savants pull me back in. They're trying to celebrate a CD release, although they don't exactly have the CDs, but they've put tremendous effort into preparing CD-Rs instead, and they look great. Their songs are intensely tuneful Brit-poppy fare, lovable and engaging. The melodies have a way of meandering while still making sense. And the lead singer is possessed of one of the warmest, richest, and loveliest singing voices I've ever heard. (I'm still not all the way down with the falsetto, which I think he uses too much, given how great his regular voice is.) And, whether it's tonight's generally good mixes or a new guitar, I can actually hear both guitars and what they're doing tonight, and they're really very cool. Much more intricate and interesting stuff going on than I could previously tell. At the end of their set, a woman in the audience screams, "PLAY ANOTHER SONG, YA PUSSIES!" How could they refuse?
