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Shark and Bear start this evening's show with a slow, spacey jam in four. It's wide-ranging and psychedelic, but kind of uncharacteristically straightforward for them; their bassist has injured himself, so they're taking it a little easy tonight. The bulk of their set is still dominated by weird time signatures, frequent changes, and freakishly complicated guitar figures (which get much more audible after the first song), but it's all kept fairly slow and sedate, by their normal standards. The "rhythm" guitar (in quotes there because his lines are often more complicated than many bands' leads, but he is kind of occupying the rhythm guitar role in the band's overall sound) is more clearly audible tonight than I think it's ever been before, and it's so very good. They close with another long slow meander in four.
Leisure are very, very young. Their music is pretty standard-sounding indie rock, poppy and with a lot of strumming. It's tuneful, but the singer's voice is a little high and whiney for my tastes. There's really nothing actively bad about the band, but I'm afraid I'm a little bored. I'm also quite hungry, so I give them four songs to make me want to stay, then leave to get a slice before the next band.
Apse, from Connecticut, have a good shot at my devoted fandom before they start playing, just because they've set up two complete drum kits onstage. All they have to do is not suck and I'm sold. They fail to suck in rather a spectacular fashion. The thing about dual drummers is that they can either play in unison, in which case you have a normal drum part but with a HUGE sound, or they can play separate parts together, and I'm in rhythm heaven. The rest of the band is quite good, with decent guitar stuff and minimal, sometimes wordless vocals (but some nice harmony). But really, I'm all about the drums. Unfortunately, they have some technical problems setting up, and then a bit more during the set, so they only get to play four or five songs.
Kincade are entirely instrumental. (They have a microphone set up, but just to thank us and the other bands between songs.) They are also quite young-looking, and they are very, very good. The guitar parts lean heavily on complicated arpeggios. The playing is very, very strong, and the songs are well composed. Still, I find my attention wandering. I feel like it needs something more: something sharp and surprising in the guitars, or bigger rhythmic shifts, or just for the songs to be shorter, so that a given chord progression gets repeated fewer times before moving on to the next section. It's not that this is in any way bad; it just doesn't quite hold my interest.
