Daffodil-11 (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah et al, Southpaw)

Names are funny things.  We pooh-pooh their importance – a rose by any other, right? – we abbreviate them, we nick them... but they have an undeniable power.  Names are important.

Last night, local music promotion team Vicious celebrated its second anniversary by putting together a line-up of fairly decent bands with awful names.  I love theme nights!  And, opportunities to offer un-asked for assistance!  So, along with the usual recap, I’m going to get all Craig Finn on these bands and remonikerize ‘em.  Feel free to play along at home.

Dr. Dog:  The only out-of-towners on the bill, this Philly band has such an awful name – the only way they could make it worse would be to spell it D-a-w-g and plug Randy Jackson in on bass – I was actually hoping to miss them.  The show started so late, though (tickets said 7:30P doors, Southpaw’s site said 8:15P, and the first band didn’t take the stage until ten o’clock), they were unavoidable.  One of their members came out with dark sunglasses, a Panama hat and red hippy-dippy long hair, and when the band launched into a weak reggae backbeat, my soul groaned.

Luckily, they’d simply branded themselves poorly:  Instead of white-boy stoner shit or noxious nü-metal, the five-piece aimed towards richly crafted pop-rock.  While its harmonies at first gave the impression of a strong Beatle influence, as the set progressed it drifted towards later parts of the Paul McCartney oeuvre.  Which is no crime.  Their songs are strong, and the band had a great amount of energy.  The musicianship isn’t there, though; it’s sloppy, and not agreeably so.  The drumming needs to tighten up, the guitar solos are underdeveloped and unwisely wander from their songs’ melodic framework.  Sunglasses guy, despite the Leon Redbone fetish, is a lot of fun to watch.  He broke a string; points, there.  He has a very agreeable voice, and should use it more confidently.  The bassist with whom he trades vocals needs to smile, more, and seemed uneasy interacting with the crowd.  I’d sack the keyboard player and replace him with a trumpet.  And practice, practice, practice, until you guys are as good as the music you’re trying to play.  But it’s not the worst thing in the world to see a band outpaced by their own ambitions, even if that ambition is to be the next Wings.

Oh, and God, that name.  “Dr. Dog?”  Since a couple songs seemed based around the concept that we all exist in dreams, let’s steal one from Richard Linklater and call you boys “Waking Life.” 

Dirty on Purpose is a great fucking band name that’s been slapped on the wrong band.  While some might hand the title off to tired sex blowhards like Morningwood or Louis XIV, for me it summons up aggressively messy finger-painting and pitted T-shirts.  There needs to be a garage band named “Dirty on Purpose,” and soon.

The band currently calling themselves this are a drone-fest, laboriously towing the Jesus and Mary ball and chain.  Apparently a band in transition – they recently lost their keyboardist/co-vocalist – their music never really showed any sign of going anywhere, it lacked build and flow; occasionally they’d wake the audience up with some impressive bursts of sound, but you should never have to wake up an audience.  The vocals made the rounds from the drummer to the two guitarists, but no one had any presence.  One of the guitarists got angry at his instrument and started slamming it on the ground.  This might have been borne of frustration, but didn’t get much of a reaction from the crowd.  If you’re going to destroy your gear, wait until the end of the set.  Don’t do it if there’s a back-up instrument at the ready; otherwise, it just feels like you’re sacrificing a stunt double.

There was a nice fuzzy bass sound on their opening number, and the band gets props for playing right through a power outage.  Unfortunately, they also played long past the point where the crowd lost interest.  They seemed a little unsure who they were, not even bothering to identify themselves for the audience until they were four songs into their set.  I’m not going to name them until they regroup and redefine themselves; otherwise I’d likely dip into the snark and call them “Ambulance, Even More Limited.”

Appropriately enough, the entire EVENT was misnamed.  What was officially the “Vicious Two Year Anniversary” was really a coming-out party for hometown here-todays Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.  It was their first concert since Pitchfork dressed their self-titled CD to the nines, and the room had sold out on the strength of that buzz. 

This was one of three high-hip happenings, last night – the Scissor Sisters were playing a hardly-secret show at the Mercury Lounge (this is how you play a secret show, folks), and the suddenly important Brit band Hard-Fi was at the Rothko – and until the curtain opened on CYHSY it was easily looking like the least of the three.  I’ve seen the Yeah boys before, and stand by that assessment... but in front of a house packed with lyrically edumacated fans there was definitely more electricity.  There will be naysayers at the ready, of course, but the band was strong, frontman Alec Ounsworth played comfortably and nimbly with the phrasing of his songs, and while there weren’t any moments that blew the room away (there’s a point in “Yellow Country Teeth” where they could –and should – get everyone breaking into Snoopy dances), it was solid, winning, indie-pop.

I do like the band’s attitude:  They opened with a song that’s not on their CD, included at least two other unrecorded numbers, and left the gimmicky “Clap Your Hands!” off the set list.  These weren’t necessarily new pieces – they’d played the go-ahead-and-stand-there anthem “Satan Said Dance” at that Northsix gig in April – but still showed they weren’t kowtowing to the fashionable whores.  After finishing the main part of their show, Ounsworth looked uncomfortable going through the bullshit hokey-pokey motions of an encore; he looked like he’d rather just keep his guitar up and get on with it.

They’re an odd bunch, on stage.  Ounsworth is a natural performer, though not much of a showman; he gets endless comparisons – I’ve done it, too – to David Byrne, but last night it struck me, long before he came out and covered “Love Minus Zero/No Limit” as the encore, that he might be gravitating more towards Bob Dylan’s affectations.  His tunes sometimes lack distinction, his vocals drift away from enunciation.  Still, up there, bookended by the high-domed, businesslike Sargent brothers and surrounded by the hyperactive, just-released freak of Robbie Guertin(?), he has no problem holding focus.

And what of the name, of “Clap Your Hands Say Yeah?”  No band should call themselves this unless they want to spend their careers playing for the pre-kindergarten set.  It almost dooms you to live up to a shtick.  Perhaps some alarmingly buoyant bunch, like a Tilly and the Wall, could pull it off, but Ounsworth’s troop isn’t a pep squad.  Flirt with the Byrne comparisons, embrace your lead singer’s verbal obfuscations, and call yourselves “Speaking in Tongues.”

CYHSY committed one big faux pas:  The band neglected to tell folks to stick around for closing act Saints and Lovers, and the crowd flushed out.  Only a handful remained behind, which is a bit of a shame.  The three piece, backlit by their own dinky reflector bulbs, started off with a long, intense mood piece, a lot of reverb, held synth notes, emotionally available vocals; it’s the sort of thing that looks easier to do than it is, and it wound up being pretty durned powerful.

Unfortunately, on the next number, lead singer Dennis Cahlo dumped the keyboards in favor of a bass and the now-standard power trio turned into a very competent U2 clone.  Which can be fine, but at 1:40AM, you’d better give me something I haven’t heard before.  Slotted earlier, during a show that started on time, they would have been acceptable.

I’ll even let them have their name.  Though at first “Saints and Lovers” made me expect something a little more electronica, or something a little Cure-ish, the passion to pull this off is there.  So go ahead, keep your name.

But dude, lose the hat.

Some etc....

For the record, CYHSY is still not listed at the AllMusic Guide.

Holy crap, the Star-Ledger reported that Elvis Costello played eight encores at his Summerstage show.

Fool Me Twice, Dept.:  Okay, second wave of London bombings, not as funny.  But fercryin’outloud, let’s not taunt them.

The British Film Institute has made a list of top 50 movies children for children under 14.  Two of the top ten are Iranian, one of those is by Abbas Kiorastami.  Apparently no one in the BFI has children.

tags: clap your hands say yeah  indie music  concert reviews  dr dog  dirty on purpose  saints and lovers  

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