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Hurray for psychotic mathy noise music in Boston! I've been wanting to see Piles for a while now, and they are most definitely worth the wait. Hard, fast, crazy rhythms dominate my experience of the band, and I am a dancing fool. The drummer's pretty wild, and he'll throw an occasional beat in there that seems like it just can't be right, but he never loses track of the underlying rhythm, so matter how tricky it is, and the rest of the band is always right there with him. So maybe it's all part of their insane plan. The bass is throbbing and melodic and plays off the drums to give us some clue where the measures are, while the guitar provides gusts of skronky noise over the top. There are a few vocals, but they are hard to hear, and really they're beside the point here. I am an instant adoring fan.
Roh Delikat are less to my taste. We have a bad beginning, since they play their first song to a backing track that includes additional drums, guitar or keys, and possibly even backing vocals. (It's a bit hard to tell.) I'm somewhat prejudiced against pre-recorded backing tracks. After that, they play all the parts for the next few songs, but the songs themselves are rather dancey, with lots of fast repetitive drumming. The singer/guitarist is really very good on guitar, and she plays some pretty interesting parts, but her vocals are pretty wobbly as far as pitch goes, and these songs sort of want a really good vocal to make them work on the level they seem to be going for.
Ho-Ag take us back to the noise. They are not shooting for pretty songs with really good vocals, which is a damn good thing when the PA cuts out completely and we have no vocals at all. (It's an even better thing that they have a megaphone on stage, that they were using to scream into the mics; they just sing through the megaphone until the PA is working again, which has the extra advantage of freeing Matt to wander through the audience.) Ho-Ag's music is loud and jumpy and noisy, with a whole lot of sudden rhythmic breaks and shifts. The guitar parts are jarring, while the keyboard player tends to use these really synthy patches that sound very odd with the rest of the band, and help to balance all the distorted guitar sludge. I like balance. I must also mention the keyboard player's outfit, a torn bit of the top of a Spiderman costume, and tight red briefs. It's ... striking.
Fortunately, the PA is fixed in time for Clickers' set, which is nearly free of equipment issues. (The kick drum pedal goes late in the set, but is quickly fixed.) I love seeing really noisy and complicated bands in this room, because the excellent sound system and Ben, the excellent sound guy, make every nuance audible. Clickers have perhaps the most melodic and engaging set I've ever heard from them. They're a lot like Ho-Ag in their jumpy and noisy approach to song writing, with even crazier rhythms and song-to-song transitions that they improvise live. That improvisational skill gives me my favorite moment in this set: when one of their songs shifts abruptly from blistering full-court press to a single delicate guitar line, Mike unexpectedly takes it in half-time, and the rest of the band seemlessly takes up his lead and explores this very different reading of the end of the song. That kind of chemistry among four people is fun to see, and makes for some amazing music.
