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This evening starts so well. In a grungy little basement space, densely packed at 7 p.m., Night Rally play an excellent set. There are some struggles getting the vocals balanced with the instruments, but the instrument balance is ideal, so that the freaky reverberant guitar wash is clear and clean, yet doesn't eclipse the rhythm section, which provides most of the song form. Devin is in rare form, crazed and in the audience's collective face, and has a delightful little between-songs digression about those days when you can smell your crotch. They close with their song cycle, which I like for its fine use of all three of their vocal styles.
Next are Tristan da Cunha, who also play to a pretty substantial crowd, which does my heart good. They start out with a song that's unusually straightforward by their standards, all tuneful and in eights. The vocals are too low, but it otherwise sounds great. Then they diverge into weirder and more challenging stuff, including "Re: Maeve," a song from their album that I've been itching to see them play live. It sounds great, even if the Swiss do not, in fact, make the best chocolate. (For my money, it's the Belgians.) Tonight, Ernie is the wild man of this group, cracking jokes and talking smack. Because I'm standing right in front of him, I can pay extra-close attention to his astonishing finger work on the guitar in these ridiculously complex, twitchy songs.
Video Pigeon are from Burlington, VT, part of a Boston/Burlington exchange program going on here. (These same bands played up there last weekend.) They're kind of a timbre band: the rhythms are good and fairly simple (as anybody's rhythms tend to seem when they go on after Tristan da Cunha), and vocals are mixed way, way low. (This is apparently more a matter of what the space permits than an artistic decision, although, as is so often the case, they seem not to realize that turning down the guitar amps would function almost like turning up the vocals.) As a result, we get to hear mainly what they do with the astonishing array of pedals that they have spread around them on the floor. (About a dozen each for both guitarists and the bassist.) And what they do is very interesting, richly textured and hypnotic without ever getting ambient dull. The nearly inaudible vocal serves mainly to add an undercurrent of Kim Gordon menace, which I like.
Carrigan are next, and have the honor of playing the last good set of the evening. (This is a device known as foreshadowing. Look at me, all literary and shit.) They're a two-piece, a drummer and a singer/instrumentalist. The latter starts most of their songs off by laying down dreamy, atmospheric guitar loops, sometimes layering them. Then he'll play a more aggressive guitar line and/or keyboard part and sing while the drummer provides tastefully intricate beats. As they finish each song, the loops (which have been playing quietly throughout the song) become audible again, tying the song together and providing a sort of contemplative coda. It's a nice effect.
Things go downhill fast when Dial M for Murder play. I've seen them once before, and they have some skills, but tonight they're mostly just drunk. Thus they scream amelodically and almost arhythmically over a really sludgy, undistinguished mess of instruments. I'm not feeling it, and after three songs of this that sound pretty much the same, I head outside to chat and wait for the next band. This is Piles, who set up quickly using mostly Dial M's equipment. Their first song sounds good, with not a lot of vocals but a LOT of fascinating rhythm and challenging guitar lines. Then some of the Dial M guys drunkenly invade the stage area and, not content with having mostly ruined their own set, proceed to completely ruin Piles' set. They grab microphones and scream into them, spray beer at the audience, and drunkenly fall over, repeatedly disrupting the set and breaking equipment. It's their equipment, and one of them lives here, so no one can even tell them to get the fuck out. You'd think that breaking off the guitar lead pin in the amp socket and causing a long delay-of-set while it's fished out with pliars might penetrate even so pickled a brain with the news that what they're doing is not funny and not cool, but no dice; once the guitar is working again, they keep it up and cause further, set-ending damage. Piles seem like they might be good, and I'd like to see them get to play sometime.
Clickers, who also live here, are excellent and have stayed substantially sober, so I'm really psyched for them to end the night on a high note. Especially when they announce that they have finally finished recording, mixing, and mastering their second EP, are really proud of it, and are going to play it tonight in its entirety. They get less than halfway through the first song when it's announced that a fight has broken out upstairs that they have to deal with. There are belligerent party-crashers that no one seems to know, they may have brought friends, the scene looks sketchy...you know how these things go. Finally, one of the housemates says that they should stop; safety first, better part of valor, all that. It's the right decision, I say, but it leaves everyone really bummed out about the way things turned out. I'm glad I got to see four really good sets, but a bit frustrated and very sad for my hosts.
