* FYI, this stuff is old. The current TRMW is here.
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
Soooo I actually didn’t end up making it to this show, which sucks, but Jason Quigley sent me an email with some rad photos so here they are. If you went to this show and want to review please send an email and I’ll post here. Enjoy!
All photos by Jason Quigley
HUSTLER WHITE
WET CONFETTI
CHANNELS 3&4 (or is this Ikebana? Help?)
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
Hmmmmm, Team Tinnitus has been a little quiet of late no? Yeah, it has, but let’s not get into any of that lame-ass navelgazing “well, this is why, because I, uh, had all this stuff to do and yaddayadda” – let’s not even get into it. Let’s just say we need some more CONTRIBUTORS up in this piece so if you go to shows a lot and you think you’d like to post something up in here please holler at yr blog.
Now let’s talk about this show I went to last night. It was a house show right near my house and my friends’ band was playing (The Hoofbeats) so when I saw the MySpace post I figured it’d be a nice way to spend a late summer night, and indeed it was. Javan and I first hit up the Egyptian Room, a lesbian drinking establishment right next to his house that we’d both been meaning to check out for a while. It was pretty chill inside, nice lighting, a little intimidating given that we were the only dudes in the place, but everyone was super nice. Also probably some good medicine for this straight white dude, given how rarely I’m put in that “other” position. Javan got a Makers on the rocks. I’ve never seen him drink whiskey.
We’d planned it so that this drink would take place during the first couple bands, seeing as we really just wanted to see the Hoofbeats (assholes!), but it didn’t work out like that. We ended up seeing all four bands. Here’s what I thought of those bands:
LEVEL ANCHORAGE
I caught my friend text messaging “This is the last house show I’m going to” during this set, and I couldn’t really blame him. Seemed like nice guys tho, so I’m not gonna go any further into the negazone.
THE HOOFBEATS
Now I know these people are my friends and all, but I swear they are actually pretty damn good. It’s an all female crew consisting of Jessica Jones from We Quit and, uh, Jessica Jones (bass) and two awesome girls I went to college with named Nell (drums) and (another) Jessica (guitar/vox). The music is kind of simple indie pop stuff, but Jessica has this wonderfully deadpan/flat voice (think Liz Phair) that makes puts just the right edge on that sweetness. The arrangements are also surprisingly deep in certain parts, and the choruses are totally smiley and great. This band is good, and these people are great. Hell yes to that.
THE MOST
Talk about stony x 5000 (right?) – turns out I went to high school with the drummer for this band. How random is that? She just moved to SF from Santa Cruz, but we both grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. Trippy… Anyway, it was awesome to reconnect with her and her band was really fun. Totally stripped down garage rock stuff, totally fun to bounce along to in a basement.
THE ICS AND ISMS
note: the kid second from right in the striped shirt has a new order patch on the back of his shirt, which is fucking adorable and awesome. way to subvert the macho punk paradigm kiddo! wuss-core 4 life!
This was a one man singer-songwriter deal. He set himself up right in the front of the living room, where you’d have to basically sit in his lap to get out the door. So I felt trapped at first – What if this sucks? Confrontation! Shit! – but it ended up being pretty good. Dude had a really nice voice, highish, tenor maybe. His songs were about really specific situations, like going to hook up some weed with a new lady friend then ending up doing coke at the dealer’s house then having another friend break up with his girlfriend and having to share a bed the three of you and not being able to sleep and thinking about stuff you shouldn’t then saying that stuff the next day and fucking up what little relationship you had. It was a little emo, yes, but delivered in this kind of sweet, optimistic way that made it ok. But then every song was about a girl and that got boring so we left.
ps: you can do better than this.
PROMO!!!
The Hoofbeats and The Most are playing together again at ACME this Friday. …Go!
photos by javan makhmali
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
This was an awesome show. Mikeala’s Fiend is fucking amazing. They’re like two 17 year old dudes from Seattle playing the most slamming amazing noise rock in the world. Kinda midway between Lightning Bolt and Hella with more bounce. See this video from their last show in Portland for documentary proof (courtesy Jeff Mawer). Seriously one of the best new bands I’ve seen in a long time.
Here are some great photos taken by Jeff Mawer. Please take a second to check out the rest of his awesome photos.
(full disclosure: i play synth in clap amp)
MIKAELA’S FIEND
WE QUIT
CLAP AMP
ALL PHOTOS BY JEFF MAWER
UPDATE: This show was great and Mikaela’s Fiend is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!! Photos and words on Team Tinnitus soon.
ripped straight out of the friendster/myspace negiverse:
people! my band clap amp is playing a most excellent house show tonight and you should all come. we go on first i think, like 9ish. our set is SHORT so get their early if you want to view our music.
the house is at 404 SE 10th at the corner of 10th and oak, a block north of stark
this is a great group of bands put together by the super nice people in hustler white, and it’s FREE – come out!
here’s some info someone else wrote
Mikaela’s Fiend (twisted variant on the post Lightning Bolt scuzz annihilation, best new band from Seattle)
Hustler White (skronky fugged up art noise with big energy)
We Quit (also treading in Lightning Bolt water co-ed duo with punkish attack and super catchy pop songs..great new PDX band)
Eva Inca Ore (disembodied voice from Alarmist)
Clap Amp (another great new PDX band..skronky, caustic Numbers style moog punk with Ex Models styled vocal edge)
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
world by daniel
e*rock by daniel
dirty projectors by daniel
I’m super late on this so let me just say this: sometimes you go to a show and you don’t really know what you’re gonna see, and sometimes you end up with your mouth open going “holy sheezus, what IS this?” and proceed to be totally enthralled for (almost) the entire set (my attention span is flimsy). Dirty Projectors did that for me. I’d been prepared for greatness, but like any jaded person-who-goes-to-hella-shows I wasn’t totally buying it.
So I was floored. The music was alien and fascinating; the video gave me chills. The sound is totally unique: a mix of vintage crooner vibes, afropop sunny funk, and Bjork-ian epic weirdness. The band was huge and pumped: upright bass, drums, female backround singers (!!!), synth, other things I forget. It was ambitious and successful.
At one point the singers were holding out a tone and all of sudden they snapped their heads back like rag dolls and slid the notes UP. That was the coolest thing I’ve seen at a show in a long time. That ruled!
Other notes:
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
Sasquatch is a hairy beast that lives in the woods, also known as Bigfoot. Sasquatch is also a music festival that takes place once a year, way out in bumfuck Washington. The town of George, Washington to be exact, which is an awesome name for a town. I went this year and this is what I saw.
A.C. NEWMAN: I didn’t really get into this guy’s set, can’t really say why. It’s really nice music, but maybe it just seemed a little too straight after shotgunning beers and smoking j’s at 1pm. Yeah, that’s probably what it was.
MENOMENA: I feel like I’ve been completely stalking these dudes lately. They’re probably starting to get a little creeped out. I saw them at SXSW, after the Gang of Four show at the Filmore, then here. It’s like every time they leave Portland, there I am, waving awkwardly, mooching band beer, always, THERE. I swear this is just coincidence. Anyway, they were good, it’s awlays cool to see people I don’t recognize getting stoked on their wonderful music, and Brent seemed to be wearing a kids soccer uniform. Who’s creepy now, HUH??
(Horrible period where my only options were Jem, Blue Scholars, and the Dears, NONE of which appeal to me at all. Bummed a cigarette under a tree. Smoked out to Jem’s whitebread reggae.)
ARCADE FIRE: My friend Javan and I were talking about Canadian bands and I was saying something halfway snarky about “trying really hard”. Which is a good thing right? I honestly wanted to mean it that way but sometimes I don’t, and I honestly didn’t know what I meant when I sat down for this show. Midway through the Arcade Fire’s set – the emotional histrionics and the dudes running around banging on stuff and making orgasm faces like some kind of indie-rock Stomp – and I thought I knew. “Trying really hard” can be like when Celine Dion tries really hard, holds her stomach, slowly curls her hand into a fist and raises it towards the heavens. It can mean schmaltz.
And yet somehow I went away liking this band more. Their songs really are pretty amazing, they sound great in a huge-ass canyon/cliff setting, and they really ARE trying hard and that’s a good thing and I hate my asshole self for implying otherwise.
WILCO: Liked it. Nils Kline is an awesome guitarist. “Spiders (Kidsmoke)” was made for arenas like this one.
KANYE WEST: So great. Awesome performer, all the more impressive given his skill as a producer. Played snippets of classic R&B hits to introduce his own R&B hits. Possibly the highlight. “Possibly” because later on my friend Kat was saying how she thought the lyrics to this song were a little effed up. I totally ignored this at first, then I read these awesome, thought-provoking posts from Julianne Shepherd and Jessica Hopper, and I got to thinking, wait, what is up with that song? And, maybe more importantly, why did I instantly dismiss my female friend’s complaint? No really, READ THOSE POSTS.
MODEST MOUSE: Good band, but I think I’ve officially decided (officials please take note) that this is not “my” good band. I just can’t really get into it. I feel like they have two basic songs, the sad song and the angry song, and I am just not needing all that sadness and anger. But (surprise!) I really like “Float On”. All my friends like them and I like my friends so I’m not talking shit. Just talking.
THE PIXIES: I never ever ever thought I’d see the Pixies once, let alone three times in my lifetime, as I now have. At this point the thrill of seeing these amazing, AMAZING!! songs live has faded and I am free to fixate on the bad parts of their show, and their are enough to make me wish I had only seen them once.
CONCLUSION: Really fun way to spend a Saturday with good friends. Really really hot. Next time save energy for the post-fest party in the campground. Bring a frisbee.
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
I tried to get some nascent Team T’ers to blog this one but both of them wussed out. WUSSES! So the burden falls to me, and lo it is a heavy one, as heavy as 15 minutes spent running my mouth into this text box. But I digress.
This show was good, if a little long for me. The Gossip were outstanding. I saw them a couple nights before at Dunes. They were a little rusty, which makes sense given that was their first time performing the new songs off their forthcoming album, which they had just finished recording a couple days before. The Berbati’s show was tight though. Beth Ditto sings with bale force, knocking all cynicism to the walls, barelling down on your very soul. She is one of the best performers in indie rock, hands down. Seeing her makes you wonder if there even are any other real performers out there, such is the order of magnitude by which she breathes fire and screams dirt on the skinny-tie masses (what?). Ironically, The Gossip seem to be moving towards the least soulful corner of that crowded room, that of “dancepunk” or whatever we’re calling the Rapture now. Yeah, there’s neo-disco riffs now, some of which I’m betting Nathan (the guitarist) picked up at his killer Suicide Club DJ nights at the aforementioned Dunes (that other Gossip show was actually part of Suicide Club, come to think of it). Mostly it works – transforming Ditto from the swamp blues mama we know to the classy disco diva she might be – but sometimes it sounds lite and unfunky. Oh yeah, and the new drummer is great. She bangs the living shit out of those drums and looks stoked to be there.
I saw Stereo Total two times in close succession a couple years ago, both very very fun shows. This show was fun, but the crowd was less excited, and I got tired towards the end of it. The songs started sounding a little samey, which I don’t remember happening before. I think maybe it was a longer set. Also the other times I saw them they built up slowly from purely synth songs to more rock performance style, which lent a nice little story-arc to the whole thing. This time the songs were more mixed up. They’re still wonderful tho, and I’ll def be seeing them next time they’re in town.
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
You might be thinking, “Where the hell is the Towne Lounge?”. You think that because it’s a very new venue and it’s hard to find. It’s right by PGE Park on a little side street kinda and until recently there was no sign, just a small green lite on a post telling you you’d found it (now there’s a sign that simply says “Lounge” which is probably still mysterious enough to retain cred).
The inside of the place is pretty awesome. It has a kind of dark and musty feeling that reminds of the ever-more-dearly departed Blackbird. The walls are green and the ceiling is gold, which is a very decadent and weird combination that somehow works. There’s tables and a very small stage. I really like the feel of this place, so when I found out the A-Frames were playing there I pee’d a little.
I pee’d because the A-Frames’ new album, Black Forest, is one of the coolest things I’ve heard this year. It gets me all pumped up in the same way I got pumped up singing “Your God is dead” etc with Trent Reznor in high school. That pump comes from the deep deep post-apocalyptic pessimism running through the lyrics and the death-knell machine-punk that backs it up. Part of me also wants to see all of humanity erased, and the A-Frames let me release that beast while simultaneously bopping around my living room.
I saw them live a while ago, opening for Country Teasers (awesome band) at Dante’s. I hadn’t heard any of their albums at that point, and was kind of interested in the live show, but not super impressed. My friend thinks their live show sounds like “just another punk band” and I can see how one might. Maybe it takes the solitude of home listening to understand this band’s icy brilliance, or maybe their new stuff is just significantly better than the old. Both probably.
Anyway, this show was really fun. The sound system seriously sucked – you couldn’t hear the vocals at all, turning up the level led to feedback = LAME – but no one really cared. The drummer smacks the living bejeezus out his drums, sometimes laying down a cymbal over the tom for added industrial krrrang. The singer/guitarist guy can whip out some lazer-sharp anti-riffs. They played mostly older songs that I didn’t know and wasn’t as into, but which were still fun to move around to. People were drunk and some people were being loud and the singer smiled at all of it, so I guess they’re not total death-to-humanity assholes. Whatever they are, they’re awesome. See? Woop woop A-Frames, my death-disco release since 2005.
Drinks drunk: 2 beers (read: hella trashed)
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
So let’s just get all that messy conflict of interest stuff out of the way now: I am mostly a publicist by trade and one of the places I work for is Berbati’s. So that’s that.
That that said (2 thats = artsy), I am really excited about this new improv/psych/weird music monthly curated by Josh Blanchard of Point Line Plane. Each night is lovingly arranged by Josh to include ornate visual projections of the brain-fried variety, DJs, and out-there musicians of the kind you’d normally only see at Dunes. Used to be you could see this kind of thing at the Blackbird, but that’s gone now, and underground art-fart music in a rock venue has become something of a rare bird (PUN!).
Chantelle Hylton, who booked the Blackbird, was largely responsible for that venue’s eclectic programming and she books the B.Pan now. She’s been trying to work within what she thought was, and to some degree is, a more mainstream rock club format, but is starting to realize she has more freedom than she originally realized. Berbati’s is run by some pretty open-minded Greeks, provided people come out and people DRINK, which hipsters do. So things like the Church of Psychedelia are permitted, and to some degree encouraged. This is exciting, and I hope to see more of it going on. We’re actually working on another somewhat similar series right now, but I’m this close to advertorial mode, so I’ll shut up about that.
One of the nice things about this show and the last one is how visually compelling the whole thing(s) is. This time there were three projections with two dedicated dudes manning the visuals. These were mostly melting digital shapes, forest imagery, blurred-out women walking in blinding white expanses – you know, trippy shit. Everything I saw was really beautiful and looked like it took a good amount of time to put together.
The first band was the Exploratory Organ Ensemble, a one-off improv project featuring members of Strategy (ok, THE member of Strategy), Yuma Nora, Space Hawk, and I’m sure many other Dunes-y bands. Performers were encouraged to bring along an organ of some kind, and a couple opted for accordions. They all gathered together in one big improvisatory mass, playing droney variations on one major-sounding chord. This reads like a mess but was actually really soothing and lovely. Think of the first track off Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children stretched out for twenty minutes or so.
The next band was White Rainbow, which is the solo project of Adam Forkner (VVRRZZNN, WORLD, many other little projects I’m sure). His performance took place within a giant white tent/cave, which took up the entire stage. The cave had some of the aforementioned trippy visuals projected on to it. We couldn’t see what he was doing in there (deft manipulation of rockist performance expectations or just plain pretentious? you be the judge) but we could hear it through four speakers situated around the room, two of which had been brought in just for this performance (hence “full spectrum”). The music was long harmonic drones (couldn’t tell what instrument was making them) which were occasionally distorted, then high planes electric guitar riffage (think Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack). This got kind of boring after a while so we left.
OK, so the whole thing was a little pretentious, but I’ll take that over predictable anyday. The Church of Psychedelia is rad; long live the Church of Psychedelia.
Drinks drunk: 4 beers
[This post originally appeared on Team Tinnitus]
My friend Javan is from Ann Arbor, MI, as are my three other friends Steve, Andrew, and Mark (another one). They also all went to high school together, which is kind of weird given that they all now live in Portland, OR, but such is the strong connection between these two lefty playgrounds.
Lately, Javan has been saying how we need to go to more hip hop shows, so when I saw this one at Berbati’s I was already thinking of him. Then I noticed that openers, Majestik Legend and OnBeLo (AK One Man Army) are both on Ann Arbor-based Subterraneous Records (named in reference to their invented slang term for Michigan : “Water World”), and the deal was sealed.
I mentioned OneBeLo to Javan, and he recognized the name from Binary Star, apparently one of the bigger underground-type rap groups in Michigan. Javan said when he lived there these dudes were merciless performers, gigging any house party or stage they could get on, often multiple times a week, oftentimes donning an oven mitt as a sign of regional pride (Michigan is shaped like a glove). The result of all this was semi-legendary status state-wide (I think).
So I went. Javan did too, but only after breaking the holy “bro’s before ho’s” maxim, forgetting about the show, and going out with his new lady friend for pasta. Turns out OneBeLo and Majestik Legend were performing together, with the latter mostly performing DJ-duties, which mostly consisted of pressing play on a CD player. They were great. OneBeLo has a great flow, able to stop and turn a phrase on a dime, changing up rhythms with perfect timing. The subject matter was mostly braggadocio, except for one song equating love with extraterrestrial contact, and another about media propaganda (or something). The alien lover song was my favorite of the night, both for the clever metaphorical device and the beat, which reminded me of Souls of Mischief’s classic “93 Till Infinity”. The rest of the beats didn’t match this one, and some of them fell into the bin marked “generic underground”.
I had no idea what to expect from Hangar 18. They’re on Def Jux which is a label I know people freak out about, but I haven’t really followed. They weren’t what I think of as Def Jux sounding. They had two MCs named Winterbreeze and Alaska, so right off the bat you know it’s going to be a little less “manly” than the Michi-rap. Both of these dudes were dorky in the extreme, and slightly effeminate. Maybe they weren’t really effeminate, but in a genre as gender-loaded as hip hop, the occasional girly giggle stands way out (yeah, rock is loaded too, but we’ll leave that for now). Being an un-macho myself, I did my best to put aside whatever lame preconceptions might keep me from embracing my own, and focus on how much fun everyone was having.
Stylistically, Hangar 18 reminds me of the Beastie Boys, or maybe their little cousin, Ugly Ducking. If you hate the Beastie Boys, you’ll hate these guys; if you love them, you won’t. I’m somewhere in between, and that’s pretty much how I felt about their set.
Unfortunately, the rest of my Michigan crew showed up right after the Michi-rap and just in time for Hangar 18. This was really their own damn fault for showing up at 11:30 on a weekday for a two-act bill. Some of them were pissed, and some didn’t care.
Drunks drunk: 3 beers (brand names withheld/forgotten), I think.
