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We're back at the beautiful Safari Lounge in Providence. Well, actually it's a little skanky, but they have an ~8 foot albino python, and this is where Badman and Sweetthieves are playing tonight. First up is Brio, an instrumental three-piece. They start with two guitars and drums; I like the sort of harsh, high-end sound you can get from the two-guitars-no-bass configuration. The drummer is very good, with lots of complicated patterns going on, and there's a lot in the guitars, too. One of them switches to bass after a few songs, but it's still pretty interesting, and I don't really miss the vocals at all.
We just saw Polaris Mine last night, but this is otherwise a completely different bill, and both had a lot of attraction. And besides, this is a great band. Tonight, they're maybe a little too much for the sound system, and I am distracted from their set by an increasingly noticeable burning plastic/overheated electronics smell. When I see someone else sniffing visibly, I start to check out where it seems to be coming from—it's one of the PA speakers—and they crank it way down for the remainder of Polaris Mine's set. Which set itself is much like last night's: fundamentally pretty pop songs played with extreme noisy abandon. The male/female harmonies that sound like they shouldn't work but do remind me of Christmas sometimes, but that's really the only point of similarity.
Badman play a kind of raucous, countrified waltz rock of their own devising. I'm really hard-pressed to think of any other band that they remind me of in any way. They combine fantastic, subtle drumming with a creative percussionist who beats on a wide variety of objects to produce immensely satisfying and occasionally baroque rhythms. The guitar is very good, but unfortunately too low tonight to get a lot of the subtleties. (Last time I saw them, I couldn't hear the drums, so tonight I'm willing to give up guitar for just one show in exchange for all that wonderful drumming.)
Sweetthieves are once again awesome. Another three-piece, they manage tonight to make everything perfectly audible, even the dual vocals. I've seen this band a bunch lately, and I feel like my descriptions are getting boring: a whole lot of "this is great and that's great and what's going on behind them is also great." But it's true. The guitar and bass have a dynamic that's normally more characteristic of two guitarists, trading lead and rhythm duties back and forth between songs or sections, and if the guitar leads are warm and lively and creative and immensely satisfying, it's the bass leads that drop jaws. Part of that is just the surprise factor, since lead bass lines are a rare thing, but another part is the bassist's gorgeous thick sound and stage presence. It's all enough to make you ignore the drummer, which would be a mistake, since he's playing with speed and dynamics and just enough flash to stand up to the amazing strings. Oh, and the tunes and vocals are good, too.
