Index of Shows | Homepage | Upcoming Shows | Write to me
Vaguely Star-Shaped are a Rhode Island band with a poppy heart and a proggy soul. They start right off in seven. In fact, most of their songs are in more conventional time signatures, but they still have a lot of odd, unexpected rhythmic fluorishes: lines with uneven numbers of measures, and extra two-beats in weird places. Yet the tunes are pretty and catchy. And the lead singer has a wonderfully confident, almost swinging vocal style. It's a little Sinatra, actually. It all works together really well.
Tristan Da Cunha are fearless tonight. They play a lot of very fast songs, all jumping ridiculously around among disparate unusual time signatures and keys. The three of them are LOCKED together through every sudden dramatic change; it's hard to believe that anyone can do this at all, but for them to do it so well! I see multiple musicians in the audience laughing with a kind of amazed, confused delight. And for the first time, I actually GET the bizarre loud-and-slow drum break in "World of Rubber". Brian's vocals are clear, commanding, and even somewhat hooky, but they never really set the hooks, just whip them out and dance spinning on to the next musical thought. The guitar is jumpy and wild and demonic. And it's all so precise and perfect!
It's really not fair to make a normal, human band go on right after that. The Pilot Light play short, simple songs in four. The guitarist mostly strums a few chords. It's all so ... quaint. In fact, it is really simple, and the lead singer's pitch isn't always exactly on, but after a few songs, I recalibrate my expectations somewhat, and I can start to hear that there are some pleasant melodies here, and I like the harmony vocals. And for the last couple of songs, the guitarist starts to do more than just strum, and the guitar has pretty, pinging tone. It's still fairly simple, but effective.
I'm getting really fucking sick of bands playing phenomenally great breakup shows so that we get to hear just how much we're missing. Tonight we witness the terminal apotheosis of The Nationale Blue. Jeff, a former member, has joined them for the occasion, so they have a three-guitar assault in effect. Since all three guitarists essentially play lead, there is the potential for chaos. Since chaos is one of the things they do best, this is a good thing. In fact, though, it is often not at all chaotic; there are three separate lead lines generated and interwoven, each one briefly stepping out front and then fading back into the magically textured mix, while the drums shake the room and drive things forward, and the bass gathers everything together and structures it into measures and verses and, well, movements. It's symphonic. Reuben sings more than he shouts, and he's actually got a really nice voice. Ernie breaks a string at one point, but with all these guitars, he just signals Jeff to play around him and changes in mid-song, coming back in at a point that makes so much musical sense, it sounds planned. It pisses me off that this was a one-off, and I don't get to see this again!
