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Mandarin, from Texas, are supposed to be on this bill, but apparently their van broke down somewhere in Pennsylvania. So we start off with Paper Thin Stages, whose first song is an instrumental. Their music is difficult to characterize: the guitars are mostly strummy chords with an occasional arpeggio section, but the chords are rich with dissonance and screaming harmonics, and seem to get weirder the closer I listen to them. The vocals (after the first song, they have vocals) are mostly shout-sung and don't contribute a lot of tunefulness. It's a Sonic Youth-y sort of effect. The other guitarist sings harmony sometimes, and he has a lovely voice; I like the parts where they're both singing the best. The bass is very good, with interesting lines and great tone, and interacts with the guitars in a way that's deep and cool. The drummer is fantastic, playing fast, fluid, complicated patterns flawlessly.
Tristan da Cunha open with a favorite of mine, "Jesus Marches With a Little Spider." Brian is a wild man on the vocals, and the guitar is squeaky and spastic, but they're all perfectly controlled. It is part of the essential genius of Tristan's drumming that all of the patterns seem entirely novel. Not just the ultra-fast, insanely hard and complicated odd-time patterns, but even their fours and twelves sound unique, on the rare and brief occasions when they employ them. Tonight they have something very special in store for us, an exquisite rarity entitled "Strong Candidate." It's a LONG, proggy symphony of a song, staggering and jumping from section to section for, I don't even know, ten minutes? Fifteen? In the course of which I swear I hear every time signature from three to fifteen at least briefly, and I mean every single one. I'm wrung out by the time they finish; I can't imagine how they feel. They follow it up with a catchy little set-closing quicky, much like a distance runner's cool-down lap.
