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A supremely odd evening of music. First TT's, for my beloved Tristan Da Cunha. In fact, there's someone playing before them, a guy with a guitar playing folky little songs and talking into the mic through some sort of Satan filter, but I don't wind up paying a lot of attention to him. (My fault, not his.) Then Tristan Da Cunha are on, and I pay A LOT of attention to them. This is not just because I find them endlessly captivating--though I do--but because they really demand and reward a lot of attention. I like a lot of music where I have to count to follow the rhythm, but this is one of the few bands that I actually sometimes can't count; the rhythms change so frequently that I don't have time to parse something odd and intricate before something else comes along to take its place! I know that sounds like hell to some people, but it's heaven for me. And it really gets me moving. The vocals are mostly low tonight, but there's a whole lot of wonderful guitar, and when Steve steps out from behind the drums to sing and play guitar on the last song, I can actually hear him singing, which may be a first.
After them are Shortfilm, fronted by the same guy that was playing before Tristan. Their first song has a weirdly plodding feel, with distorted guitar strumming, and doesn't really grab me. But they pick things up in the next few songs, and everything gets more interesting. The lead singer's voice is a bit of an acquired taste, but I get used to it pretty quickly, and when the other guitarist also sings they sound good together. The drumming is excellent. Their songs are moderately interesting indie rockers, a little short on ambitious guitar but pleasingly textured. The lead singer introduces "our political song" by announcing that he'll be voting Republican, or perhaps Libertarian. (Both are mentioned, but he kind of mumbles, and I can't make out exactly where he goes with it.) Fortunately, I can never hear a lot of lyrics in a club show, and I catch exactly none from this song.
It's a good evening so far, and I'd probably stay and check out the last band, but Tom is really pushing for the spectacle of Voodoo Screw Machine defiling Kitten Pearl, so we head over to Harper's Ferry, arriving near the end of The Hidden's set. They are wickedly tight--the drummer is the best I've ever seen her, and the brothers Brockman are, as always, a machine gun firing razor blades. But the experience of this band is dominated by their lead singer, who is "energetic" the way outer space is "big." Harper's is a large room, so he has plenty of room to move around, pacing in the audience at the end of the mic cord, confronting audience members, and climbing on the furniture. All while alternating between impassioned shouting and gorgeous, powerful singing. The songs themselves are a little more metal than I usually go for, but the delivery is very compelling.
Voodoo Screw Machine take this particular dichotomy to its--well, I was going to say "logical extreme," but there's nothing "logical" about a Voodoo Screw Machine show. Anyway, their music is parodically cheesy heavy metal schtick, to the extent that I find it somewhat tough to get through. But the delivery! Stony Curtis is an absolute monster, with wank-metal guitar skills that beggar belief. Frontcreature Thermos X. Pimpington actually sings a bit tonight, between throaty roars, and he's surprisingly good. But the point is the spectacle. He starts out wrapped in a Hello Kitty comforter, throwing it off to reveal a huge black-leather-and-steel S&M dress thing. The next few songs are certainly extreme; body parts fly, Satan is invoked, you know the drill. But things really get going when Kitten Pearl comes out in a Naughty Nurse outfit, pushing a pram. The next several songs (regular parts of the VSM repertoire, masterfully adapted) become a story of Thermos abducting and brutalizing her infant charges, her flight, and her lethal revenge. Then there are reciprocal zombifications, and electrical tape. I'm told that they've been banned from ever returning to Harper's Ferry, to no one's great surprise. It's quite a show, though the music starts to wear on me after a while.
