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Mane is a three-piece. They remind me a lot of a bunch of indie-pop bands that were popular in the late '80s: World of Pooh and the Blake Babies come to mind. The singer has that appealing little-girl-voice-with-teeth thing going on. They're instrumentally solid, although I'd like the guitar to be louder. I think that the tunes are catchy and interesting, but it's a bit hard to tell, and here's where we come to the problem. The singer's pitch is awful, so I spend a whole lot of their set trying as hard as I can to will her onto the right pitch. This is ineffective and distracting.
The Empties don't have this issue, as they dispense with vocal pitch entirely. The vocalist is a screamer, and she pounds a keyboard occasionally for an additional rhythmic element. I kind of like what she does with the keyboard, and the rhythm section is solid and propulsive, but I'm all about the guitar in this band. Lots of dark, swirling minor key scales, tasteful feedback, and occasional blasts of fast, metal wizardry. It's a virtuosa performance, the more impressive for the guitarist's grim, workmanlike demeanor; she really doesn't seem to enjoy the stage, but as long as she can play like this, I don't care.
Piles were to have been next, but we're running way late, so Apple Betty go on. In keeping with the evening's themeless theme, they are a garage rock three-piece. Lots of straight-up three-chord rockers and sneering vocals. I'll admit, I've gotten kind of bored with garage rock lately. But they have a fun, snotty sort of energy, and they're distinguished by some nice harmony vocals.
For the fourth week of their residency, Piles are playing an "unplugged" set, experimenting with softer readings of some of their songs. Or trying to, anyway; Chris is playing an acoustic guitar, but he's playing it with distortion and feedback and it doesn't really sound all that different. The main difference seems to be that he and Mike are sitting on stools. Trever plays with those wrapped bundles of thin dowels instead of regular sticks, but he still hits pretty hard, and there is shrapnel flying at least once. The vocals are pulled back, to weird little yelps and yips instead of the squawks and screams they normally employ. I love these songs—their fierce bass lines, weird and engaging riffs, and profusion of crazy meters are just the sort of thing I love—so I'm glad to hear them in any setting, and more glad to hear Piles mess around with them without changing their difficult, wonderful cores.
Maleblood shares one member with Piles, but Trever has switched to bass. They are more of a metal band, a bit more straightforward and with a greater emphasis on Monster Riffs. It's a little hard for me to get into them; the guitar wizardry is plenty impressive, but the vocals lean toward hardcore screaming, and I feel like they need some kind of melodic element, either in the vocals or in the bass. But then, I'm also really tired at this point, so it's quite possible that I'd be more into them if I could focus fast enough to follow the blizzard of notes from the two guitars.
