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Paper Thin Stages haven't played a show in a long time (well, excepting one in Providence a week ago that I didn't go to), they have a passel of new songs to show off, and they're releasing a 7" with two of my favorite songs of theirs on it. I am, as we say in the Northeast, wicked psyched for this show. The new songs are great examples of the PTS artistic approach: veering, rhythmically advanced and tricky, and intensely structured. There is some strikingly great guitar on several of them, to go with the strikingly great bass and always complicated, always perfect drumming, and the drummer has a microphone now, which is new. It's still the case that none of them really "sings" very often, as such, but three different voices shouting with and against each other provides an added degree of vocal interest. During several of the breaks between songs, they play patter prerecorded by Bill Littlefield, which adds an archly surreal element to the whole set. It also explains, somewhat elliptically, what several of the songs are about, which is nice.
Piles are not selling merch or debuting new songs. They will have to settle for brutalizing us with freaky, complicated, mostly instrumental rock. The nice thing about mostly instrumental rock is that I can get right up next to the stage and not worry about missing the vocals in the mix. Tonight's set would seem to go off without a hitch, if they didn't persist in calling attention to every mistake they make, no matter how small. It's also kind of disturbing how much they beat each other up, verbally, onstage. I hope it's at least partially played up for effect. But then, whatever it takes to produce the kind of precision jagged viciousness and fucked up rhythms of a Piles song is okay with me.
Roh Delikat start out with a very short, spacey bowed-guitar-and-looping segment that peters out when the bassist can't come in. A small colloquy of gear nerds manages to get power restored to the bass amp, and the spaciness resumes, to be joined by the rhythm section. The rhythm section are good, solid and interesting, but my focus in this band is on the singer/guitarist, and in particular on the way her high, light voice, singing pretty pop songs, plays against her caustic, arty guitar work. There's more bowing later on, and in between a lot of hard, incisive texture in her playing. It's a good balance, and I'm disappointed when their set is cut rather short.
To say that Certainly, Sir are not to my taste would be an understatement. To say that I'm vomiting blood by the middle of the second song would be hyperbole. As is so often the case, the truth lies somewhere between the extremes. The three people on stage are pumping out the smooooooooth dance grooves. The drummer has one actual drum, a couple of cymbals, a hi-hat, and a bunch of triggers. He mostly plays very simple beats, with all the fills coming from the canned tracks. A second member primarily fiddles with a laptop and triggers the canned tracks, although he also plays a bit of keyboard. The third person sings melodies that never seem to go anywhere in a high, thin voice and plays minimal R&B guitar. I can't really tell if this is done well, because I'm so busy hating its goals and aesthetic; the people dancing in front of me seem to find it conducive to shimmying and hip-shaking.
