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I'm a little bit sad that Tristan Da Cunha's residency is coming to an end tonight. It's been unbelievably awesome, and if they'd keep playing once a week, I'd keep coming to the shows for the foreseeable future. Tonight starts strong with The Hound. They are metal, and they are brutal. Slash and burn guitars and enormous bass lines. The rhythm is constantly changing. And the "singer" is this petite girl (with '80s hair and a tie tonight) that roars like some kind of cross between a lion and a locomotive. It's terrifying and viscerally thrilling. You will bang your head or have it banged for you.
Boo Radley Bruises Badly is the next act. If you're not hip to Boo's scene, this is Luke from Night Rally's solo side project, in which he sings and raps while playing guitar to prerecorded tracks. I'm not a big fan of prerecorded tracks in general, but the rapping tends to be really smart and interesting, so I sometimes enjoy his shows. Tonight the vocals and guitar are kind of drowned out by the canned stuff, which is a shame. There's also a big pause for technical difficulties in the middle of the set. (During this pause, there's a whole lot of talk about how he and Trever from Piles are going to have a rap battle, but it never materializes.)
Piles are next. They've planned a set heavy on Nirvana covers, since this is a cover-friendly night. (We're getting to that.) Their Nirvana covers sound pretty good: a little sloppy and wild, but Nirvana had a lot of that going on themselves. The originals are better, in my opinion—less tuneful, but more freaky and ambitious. They too have tremendous technical difficulties, mainly with the guitar amp, which feeds back piercingly if the guitar is turned up anywhere close to loud enough. So half the time they struggle through with nearly inaudible guitar, and half the time they struggle through with feedback. The feedback actually works fairly well with their overall sound, or it would if they would stop telling us how much they suck and how bad they sound before, after, and sometimes during each song. That's the real problem here. However, the technical delays do lead to a surreal highlight of an evening which will not lack for surreal highlights, when Trever takes a call from his 15-year-old sister during their set and holds the phone up to the mic so that the whole audience can hear her. ("HI, AMBER!" we all shout in unison.) They are joined by Mike Gintz, formerly of Clickers, on second guitar for the last two Nirvana covers. I've missed seeing him play.
Tristan Da Cunha have something extra-special planned to end their residency; they are going to cover Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention's "We're Only In It For The Money," live, in its entirety. (Well, minus the ending, for which they've stated their intention to substitute something more suited to live performance from another album.) It's a ridiculous thing to attempt: nineteen songs, most of them absurdly hard in and of themselves, and originally recorded by at least ten musicians, plus all manner of bizarre spoken interludes and sound effects and orchestral segments. And it was highly produced and edited and processed. And Tristan Da Cunha is a three-piece. Clearly it is not possible for three human musicians to do this. Whatever Tristan Da Cunha are, they are not subject to such limitations. I haven't heard this album in a very, very long time, but a lot of it comes rushing back to me when I hear them masterfully replicate it. And I can tell from the huge grins on the faces of the people singing along to every word that they're nailing it. Plus, they just sound fantastic. Ernie covers at least four instruments on the guitar. They duplicate some of the weird vocal effects just with their voices. And they do the whole thing in cute dresses. They finish up with a couple of their own brilliant compositions, and then leave the stage to thunderous applause, prolonged cheering, and a bit of chanting. None of which really manages to capture just how overwhelmed I feel.
