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Noah Maxner plays solo acoustic guitar, without vocals. It's a little difficult to tell when he's actually started; he kind of eases gradually from tuning and soundchecking into minimal, wanky soundscapes. It's mostly quiet, slow, bland stuff, with not a lot of harmonic structure that I can hear. Then, every once in a while, he suddenly and inexplicable launches into rapid cascades of new-agey picking that don't seem to have anything to do with the occasional-note stuff they come out of. There is a part where he saws screechily at the strings with a bow, and that sounds pretty bad, but it's at least got some texture to it. Then it's back to the soundscapes. I'm bored and frustrated, and also hungry, so I pop out for a slice. When I come back, I swear he's doing the exact same thing I walked out on, but fortunately he's almost done.
Jaggery is the band I came here to see, since I'd seen the singer, Mali Sastri, in her previous project, last titled Quay. Like that band, this one is focused on her rich piano and her lovely, fluid, flexible vocals. The main vocal mode is clear and haunting, legato lines with lots of reverb on them. In fact, I think the reverb is just a tad overused; she also breaks into a rich, guttural scream from time to time, and here I wish we could hear it in all its harsh glory, without the reverb softening its edges. The band is fascinating: loping upright bass, an effects-heavy guitar filling in the spaces on some songs, and a drummer playing one of the most interesting improvised kits I've ever seen. His "bass" drum is a djembe with a kick pedal. Instead of a high hat, he's got a gourd mounted on his foot. And he makes as much use of hand percussion as he does of his snare and cymbals. Throw in elaborate vocal trills and plenty of odd-time rhythms, and you've got a truly captivating set.
After that, we bolt from TT's and head over to the Paradise Lounge, arriving just in time for Piles. We're told that Trever is sick tonight, but Piles is firing on all cylinders. Fast, high-energy, precise, and ultra-fierce. There's something very odd with somebody's signal stream, and it sounds like one of the string players has a new, incredibly thick and filthy distortion pedal. I am later assured that that is not the case, and it's just an accident of how Piles' system and the house system interacted, but it's new and interesting and sounds fantastic. Harsh and unlovely, to be sure, but this is not soothing music, and it fits in nicely. I start out sitting at a table, but by the time the astounding rhythms of "Sub-Mariner" ring out, (as the first notes play, Chris asks us, "Is this what you want?" And it is. It is.) I am up and dancing. They actually try to stop then, but it's early and we want more, so they do the one that they start with the intro from "Killing in the Name." (Since more than half their songs have vocals consisting entirely of occasional wordless screams, I'm terrible at remembering the names of any of them.) I love where this one has gone, and the ending has really started to integrate the borrowed riffs with the middle section that they wrote. It's powerful stuff.
