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Gabe Plays Drums. It's a good name. Straight up, and it tells you what's going to happen. More specifically, Gabe delivers a longish, incoherent monologue that somehow purports to set forth some theory of how music should be, in which he claims (or disclaims) that he hasn't practiced for this at all. Then he hooks up his iPod and sets it to playing popular hip-hop, and drums along with it. He's not a bad drummer, but (as he made relatively clear) he hasn't practiced at all, so he's fine in the more straightforward bits, but when he tries a more complicated fill it gets very dicey. Some of them land on their feet, and some of them he sort of staggers out of, trying to find his way back to the beat. Screw the philosophical exegesis and practice, I think.
Hands of Fate is another solo act. This is one guy singing and playing guitar. It's pretty gentle stuff, with just enough delay and reverb on the guitar to keep it from being purely folky. What's weird, though, is that each piece feels like the vaguely sketched-out idea for one section of a song. Just when you think it's about to move into the chorus and maybe wake up a little, he stops and says, "Thanks." Then starts another one. It's an interesting exercise in minimalism, but I find it kind of hard to get excited about. There are at least a couple of more put-together songs in the set, and I rather like the first one, but the one he finishes with is more overtly religious than I'm really comfortable with.
Up next, due to a scheduling change pursuant to technical difficulties, is Tristan da Cunha. Tonight, they are playing the only album by an obscure mid-'70s glam rock band called Jet in its entirety. It's the sort of thing they do. It can be kind of disappointing to me to see an entire set by my favorite band in which they don't play any of their songs, but I can totally see why they are into this album and would want to spread the word. Several of the songs are big, sprawling, dramatic things, with lots of weird and sudden changes. It's tricky stuff, and they handle it well. There are a couple of moments that sound like they're not absolutely perfect, which wouldn't be at all remarkable if this band did not normally operate at such a ridiculously high level.
Next is Calumet-Hecla, in their first appearance as a four-piece. They've added a second guitarist (and occasional synth operator), because apparently one guitarist with 5 guitarists' worth of pedals was not enough. (Notes: Photo by Tia Carioli, and also, there are even more pedals that you can't see in that picture!) In fact, the second guitarist is a great addition; it makes their sound infinitely deep, and I could just stand here and bathe in the sounds even if the music never went anywhere. But in fact it does, driven by a solid, interesting rhythm section. There are also some vocals, mostly spastic screams from the impeccably dressed bassist, but they seem beside the point. They play three or four "songs," each a long, meandering composition with many shifts and turns.
Piles are closing out their residency by playing "In Utero." Again, it's odd to see a band I love and not get to hear any of their songs, but these are some damn fine songs that they've chosen to play instead. And it's a weird change to see Piles take something so seriously; their normally loose and wild stage presence is replaced by a fanatical determination to do the album justice. (Well, except for the kazoos; being a three-piece, they can't play both guitar parts on "Very Ape," so they hand out kazoos and get the audience to play along.) Chris can do a stunningly good Kurt Cobain. The audience is pretty seriously enraptured. (Of course, most of the people around me are too young to have seen Nirvana, so this is probably a dream come true for a lot of people.) They're thrown for a bit of a loop when a bass string breaks just before "All Apologies," for which they'd planned to have the lead played on bass, but they soldier through it and do a beautiful version.
