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Codetta are a jumpy, sort of pleasantly harsh rock three-piece. A bit Nirvana, actually, but less melodic and with more advanced rhythm. Here at Great Scott, where the excellent mix hides no flaws, Andrew's voice sounds kind of rough, both in the less-than-perfect sense and in the richly-textured sense. His guitar, though, is all screaming demon excellence, and is what mostly holds my attention and makes me enjoy this set a lot, and the rhythm section is polished and ambitious.
Seneca, of course, take "ambitious" to a whole other level. They start out with the drummer playing piano, for a long, spacey, meditative section, before he sits down and lets it fly. When he gets going, he plays fast and hard, and if he's not always perfect, what he's trying to do is so nearly impossible that I'm willing to cut him a lot of slack. Here, too, the mix is perfect, and I can hear the vocals better than ever before. As a result, I am able (several minutes into the song) to figure out that one of the songs is some kind of Amphetamine Psychosis Remix of "Red Rain." Then it's into an absurdly long and complicated piece, with plenty of time and rhythm changes and an achingly lovely vocal. Everywhere you turn your attention in this band, there's something amazing going on.
Alienist Outfit are celebrating the release of their CD, and they seem really happy to have a full room, despite the season's first real snowfall. The thing that distinguishes this band for me is their dual lead singer configuration, and their weird, characteristic sense of harmony. It reminds me of X, oddly enough, despite both singers being male. Not that the rest of the band sound like X at all. They're mellower and more straightforward, with a bit of the stoner vibe I associate with jam bands. They front-load a few numbers with some very interesting rhythm, but it soon settles into more standard fare.
Finally, Constants return us to the land of absurdly long, symphonic rock compositions, complete with movements and recurring themes. Like Seneca, their basic dynamic is a wash of reverb-heavy vocals and lush, beautiful guitar lines over a wild and brutally precise rhythm section doing amazing things in advanced time signatures. The rhythm section is all the more amazing tonight, since the drummer is playing injured, and in fact pauses at one point to wrap duct tape around his already-taped finger before going on with the set. He has to wait for that pause, though, since a Constants set is one grand outing, with no real separation into distinct songs. This permits them to do incredible things with higher-order structure, but it gets frustrating when they won't even pause long enough to let me scream my approbation!
