Alaska, Andrew Cedermark, White Laces, and Tungs
Friday, November 19 at Strange Matter
When you're the sort of person who gets nervous in anonymous crowds, reviewing shows has its pitfalls. One of them is the dreaded circumstance in which you get to the show and realize you don't know anyone. Whenever that happens to me, I try to find a random spot in the crowd and avoid making eye contact with anyone. It's easier to deal with when I'm at a big show, like at The National or something, where the crowd is large enough to render anyone relatively anonymous. But when going to a small venue that you attend on a regular basis, it's singularly disconcerting to walk in and find a decent-sized crowd consisting of absolutely no one you know. On the other hand, it's also kind of awesome, especially in cases like last Friday night, when you feel like you've found a whole new pocket of the local scene you didn't know existed. I knew that there was a buzz around bands like Tungs and White Laces, a psychedelic/shoegaze revival within the local indie scene, but I didn't know who was going to those shows or what sort of scene existed for that style. Now I do. And I'm glad to see that those bands aren't just playing to nobody, that they have their own followings within the local scene.
Tungs are the sort of band whose members switch instruments between songs. As with any band that does this, some of their instrumental configurations are better than others. They opened up with two guitars, bass and drums on the first track, and that version of their lineup sounded pretty good. However, having heard their studio recordings before, I can see where a studio environment puts them at a slight advantage. The ability to fill in space within their arrangements with layers of tracked-in atmosphere and noise gives their songs a robustness that they are sometimes missing live. That absence became more noticeable on the next two songs, on which they switched to a configuration featuring one guitar player, a drummer, a conga player, and either a keyboard player or a bass player. The congas no doubt add something to the studio recordings of these songs, but as I was listening to them, I couldn't help but feel that they'd have been better served by using a different instrument in the live arrangement. It was sometimes hard to hear the conga, and even when you could hear it, it didn't seem like it was being played all that well, with rhythms going on and off beat frequently as the songs progressed. Based on the songwriting Tungs does, and the sort of sound they create live, it's clear that they are heavily influenced by psychedelic bands of previous eras. At this point in the set, though, I was reminded less of famous bands at the top of that genre than I was of the sort of garage-band records that were released in the late 60s. You know the ones, where the band who was playing "Louie Louie" three years before is trying to follow the direction in which the sound is progressing, only their ambition outstrips their talent and sometimes leaves them fumbling around with an instrument or arrangement that they can't really quite play yet. Don't get me wrong, though--I love that kind of stuff. I'm a huge fan of bands who cover their technical limitations with noise, and who constantly push their limits even when it means reaching for things they can't quite do yet. And on the last couple of songs Tungs played, I saw that they can do quite a bit right now. The guy who'd played conga and bass earlier in the night got on the drumkit for these last two. It immediately became clear that drums were his best instrument, and that he was the best drummer in the band. With this more assured rhythmic backing, Tungs blasted into the stratosphere on their last two songs, bringing the entire set to a climax with a saxophone solo that shared characteristics both with Archie Shepp-style free jazz freakouts and the sort of sax solos that Hawkwind's Nik Turner laid down on classics like "Brainstorm." Tungs may not always be able to quite carry off what they're trying to do, but they deserve points for trying, and their best moments are good enough to make it all worthwhile.
White Laces were next. At some point during the evening I realized that I knew their drummer, Jimmy Held, who has also played in a million other Richmond bands--Field Day, Segway Cops, Flechette, Resonance, etc. I just didn't know he was in White Laces. I don't know where he finds the time for all these bands. Anyway, White Laces initially reminded me of the heavier end of the early 90s shoegaze style--a few British bands, like Ride and Swervedriver, but more commonly the American bands who were influenced by the British bands, as they tended to rock harder than their British counterparts. While bands like My Bloody Valentine, The Pale Saints, and Lush seemed to spend most of their time on post-Cocteau Twins ethereality, American bands like Versus or the now-sadly-forgotten late 90s Richmond band Damn Near Red cared more about rocking out. However, both of those bands were also more melodic than White Laces, and I felt like this was where Jimmy made a big impact on their sound. Every other band I've ever seen him play in has been hardcore, or at least post-hardcore, and he brought that edge to his drumming in White Laces. Even when the tremoloed-out guitars were playing overt melodies, Jimmy was beating the hell out of his drums, and when everything got loud and distorted, he just pounded on them that much harder. The set ended with "Sick Of Summer," my personal favorite from White Laces' newly released self-titled EP. In a live environment, that song delivered on everything the studio version had promised and then some. It ended with a huge, powerful half-speed breakdown during which singer/guitarist Landis Wine nearly dropped his guitar and, after a few clear repetitons of the riff, everything just dissolved into loud, chaotic noise. It was the perfect ending to an excellent set that was probably the highlight of the night.
Next up was Andrew Cedermark, who used to play guitar in Titus Andronicus and therefore has a certain amount of buzz in the indie scene right now. For most of his/their set (it's always weird when someone billed as a solo artist has a backing band--is it proper to refer to them as "they," like they're a band, or just as "he," acknowledging the reality that the frontman is at least being billed as a solo act?), I found myself wondering what the shouting was about. While the songs had decent melodies, were performed well, and impressed me with their distorted volume, his songwriting seemed to be missing the energy level required to really make it work. To be more specific, all of his songs were really slow. I found myself thinking of Yo La Tengo, only I was imagining a strange hybrid between two different versions of their sound. Cedermark's songs were played as loudly as Yo La Tengo's big, upbeat numbers, but at the speed of their slower, quieter numbers. It was OK at first, but the cumulative effect left me a bit bored. On the last couple of songs they played, they picked up the pace a little, and though they never got quite as upbeat as I wanted their loud, melodic songs to be, they did catch my interest a little bit more. I'd even go so far as to say that the last couple of songs were good, and that if there had been more like that interspersed throughout his set, I'd probably have enjoyed the whole thing quite a bit more. As it was, though, I spent most of Cedermark's set zoning out.
Alaska were the final band of the evening, and they truly got a raw deal. By the time they set up and were ready to play, it was 1:25 AM, and almost everyone had left the show. There were off-duty Strange Matter employees drinking at the bar, and a few members of the other bands that had played were still packing their equipment, but only two people were watching when they started their set--the bass player's girlfriend, and me. I was tired as hell by that point--I'd been up since 8:30, I'd worked shifts at both of my non-RVA jobs over the course of the day, and I'd come straight to the show after working for 12 hours. I had to get up and do it all again the next day, including reviewing a different show (Joanna Newsom at the National), and I was hoping to head for home as quickly as possible. However, once I was one of two people watching a band play, I couldn't really leave without it being very awkward. Thankfully, Alaska's set was good enough that, once they started playing, I didn't really want to leave. They were an instrumental power trio who played catchy, poppy tunes that were really enjoyable to listen to. I definitely found myself thinking at multiple points during their set that they'd be better if they had a singer--there were a lot of points during the songs where a vocal melody really would have livened things up. Even without a singer, though, they were quite good. The interplay between the different instruments in the band worked particularly well, with the bass and guitar trading lead melodies back and forth and creating layers of sound even in spite of their relatively small lineup. The drummer was really talented too.
It's a damn shame that they spent most of their set playing to almost nobody. Avoiding this kind of situation is the responsibility of the show's promoter, and the promoter dropped the ball here. Part of what you need to do as a promoter, especially when you're setting up a show for an out-of-town band who can't count on their friends filling up the venue, is create a situation in which every band on the bill plays to as many people as possible. Whoever figured out the order for this show made a number of mistakes. Having both Richmond bands play at the beginning of the show was a bad call, because you almost always want a local band to close out the night so their fans will stay for the whole thing. When you have a headliner who is well-known enough to fill a significant portion of the club by themselves, you want to put them on as late into the bill as possible, too. In this case, pretty much the same amount of people watched all three of the first three bands. Andrew Cedermark is based in Charlottesville, and it seemed clear that some of his friends had made the trip down. Really, as long as Alaska had played before he did, they would have been well-served. It might have been a good idea to have White Laces play last, though it seems like it wasn't necessary. But giving the show-closing spot to the band with the least draw out of everyone on the bill was the worst move possible. The idea of booking a relatively unknown band when they're on tour is to expose them to new listeners who may enjoy their music. You can't do that if everyone has gone home before they play. Alaska were a good band that played well. They deserved better.