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Barnacled sort of slowly accrete onstage. There are, eventually, eight of them: drums, percussion, bass, electronics, accordion, bassoon, and alto and baritone saxophones. This seems promising. The alto sax player puts on some sort of mask, and they gradually begin to play. The mix is a terrible muddy mess, so certain things are completely lost: the percussionist might as well not be playing, and I can only rarely hear the bassoon. Pity, since they seem like some of the more interesting elements. The drummer and bassist are fine, if a bit repetitive. Unfortunately, the alto sax is the one thing that cuts clearly through all the droning mud, and is probably my least favorite thing going on onstage. He alternates between simple repeats that quickly become boring (and then continue long past that point) and runs of the bizarrely unpleasant rapid squeaking blither of seemingly unrelated notes so mysteriously common among jazz saxophonists. It goes on and on and on. When they eventually stop, I cannot muster even a ceremonial golf clap.
Hi Red Center are certainly much more entertaining, though that's damning them with faint praise. They have vocals, high and odd and even somewhat pretty, in an intensely quirky way. The guitar shares melodic duty with a vibraphone, which I don't recognize as such because the resonating tubes have been removed. (It's a much less annoyingly wussy instrument without the tubes!) The drumming is psychotic, with weird, frustrating speed-ups and slow-downs that are obviously planned and some bizarre breaks that I can't really wrap my head around. Simple and straightforward melodies over psychotically weird rhythm works much better for me than the converse, a realization that comes to me while I ponder why I'm enjoying this so much more than Barnacled.
Gold are who I've come to see, but they've changed their lineup and, apparently, their entire musical philosophy since I last saw them. Then, they were wild and rhythmically challenging; tonight they set up and maintain a static drone over the most tastefully restrained drumming. There is a vocalist, who appears to scream into a microphone and apply a wonderful variety of effects, but he's facing away from the audience for their entire set and I can barely hear him, so I can't really get much out of him. The rest of it is just boring. I feel betrayed.
