I Think We All Know the Words (Most Serene Republic/Kinski, Mercury Lounge)

This is what I love about living in New York:  I make a random CD purchase (I like the band name... or the cover... or think I’ve heard something good about it, somewhere, once... or it’s on a label I trust...), immediately fall in love with it, and find out that the band is playing in town that very night. 

Happens more than you’d think.

Yesterday, a great confluence of all things led me to The Most Serene Republic, the latest export from Canada’s Arts & Crafts label; in the wake of the recent leaked releases of Broken Social Scene and Death Cab For Cutie, their Underwater Cinematographer seemed a neat combo of both, with frontman Adrian Jewett’s Ben Gibbard-ish girly-man vocals riding on BSS’ multi-layered, uplifting swoon.

It’s very, very good.  Buy it now.

If “Content Was Always My Favorite Colour” doesn’t have you *floating* by song’s end, you’re not alive, and shame on you for hanging around and taking up space.

They’re good in concert, too, but different; you’d be forgiven if you thought for a second that you were seeing Stars.  Jewett – who, other than an occasional turn on trombone, doesn’t play an instrument – has definitely stolen more than a couple steps from Torquil Campbell, melodramatically contorting his visage and moving through a series of very theatrical poses; he even, last night, had the whole tight-V-neck-sweater-with-shirt-collar-on-the-outside thing happening.  And live, there’s much more emphasis on the shared vocals with guitarist/singer Emma Ditchburn (who can’t be more than five-foot-nuthin’), a la Stars’ Campbell/Amy Millan.

Unlike the other group, though, this one didn’t bore me to tears.

They move.  The bassist, who was chachacha’ing ‘round the stage in stockinged feet (he stopped wearing shoes, he told me, because his cord would always get tangled in the tongue), would occasionally knock over mic stands and whatnot.  Underneath his torso’s tortured histrionics, Jewett’s sharp, skinny legs shimmied around with a refreshing recklessness.

They’re talented musicians – more than they have to be, actually, and that makes them a bit unfocused, live.  There’s only six of them – making them one of the smaller Canadian bands around – and the drummer, bassist and lead guitarist have very complicated agendas.  Songs can get buried under jazz-prog ambitions – when Jewett finds a strong melody, the band impressively collapsed around it, supporting it perfectly – but too often, there’s a bit too much busywork going on. 

One of the most successful songs, last night, was “Proposition 61,” which starts small, with a simple, quiet guitar riff and hand claps, and builds; it gives the crowd an in, a way to hear each part as it gets added, even as the drummer demandingly complicated the clapping and Jewett added some human beat-boxery.  Finally, they all united around a chant, a variant on “Hey Jude:”  “She took a sad song, made it sadder!”  Expertly done, and if these kids can do more of this, they’ll be unstoppable.

And their desire to overcomplicate things is hardly a black mark because these are kids.  They’re not Smoosh-aged, but they’re really young; it’s like Canada’s going war on indie rock (especially the Battle of Broken Social Scene) has finally taken all that country’s of-age musicians; the conscripts are getting younger and younger.  Their site’s brief bio states that MSR is composed of friends from Milton, Ontario, who left school to make music.

They should find themselves justly rewarded for their decision.

Their set – they were the second of four acts at the Merc, last night – felt much too short; I immediately wanted to see the band headline.  But let’s not rush them.  There’s too much of that already.  It’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun watching them make their own splash.

They’re back in town for CMJ, performing on 9/16, doing a 6:30PM set at the Hiro Ballroom; they’re back again in October, opening for Metric, for dates at the Bowery Ballroom and Southpaw (though they’re not listed on the sites for either).  I strongly suggest you stop by.

Kathryn Yu has pics from last night, as does Coolfer.

*

Kinski doesn’t like singing.

It’s not just because they’re a (mostly) instrumental band.  They like to keep everything on the low down, mucking about in a grungy aural basement where the light of melody casts no shadow.

Or some such thing.  They just don’t play anything in the upper registers, very often, and that can make for some dull listening.

I enjoyed their 2003 Sub Pop debut,  Airs Above Your Station, but never felt the urge to buy any of their follow-ups.  Airs featured some very involving soundscapes and had me fooled into thinking their guitar-based stuff was post-rock; last night I realized that I was very wrong, that they are (as others have pointed out, I simply didn’t listen) more of a noise-rock jam band.  They are involved, and intense, and have a variety of effects with which they play:  Both guitarists (one of whom looks like a balding Eric Idle, the other of whom does indeed look a bit like Klaus Kinski’s fleshier older brother) and the bassist had a half-circle of pedals at their feet, and an appropriate amount of time was spent with each musician on his/her knees, twiddling away.

At one point – with one guitarist now on a heavily-synth’d flute and the bassist taking a bow to her instrument – I couldn’t figure out what noises were coming from what instrument, at all.  I suppose you could say they’d successfully transcended their instrumentation; I’d offer that they’d completely detached themselves from it.  It sounded a bit like whales asking each other for a fuck.

Which isn’t to say it wasn’t impressive.  The Kinski-looking guitarist sampled himself something like a dozen times over within a minute, so quickly I at first thought it was playback.  Just thinking about it now, my.  jaw.  drops.  And his work on “Semaphore” – the highlight of the show, for me – was almost like time-travel, him pounding away at a guitar that was nothing but echo.  Too often, though, the band returned to the same sludgy jam at the same regular rhythm.  When, during the last song of the main set, one of the performers started actually singing – lyrics! –  it seemed a bracing reminder of just how nice it is to hear an honest-to-goodness song.

*

The best part of The Big Sleep’s set was Spilled Drink Guy, this bedheaded fan up front who epileptically quivered so much to the music that his cup went from full to half-empty.  My outlook on the band followed suit, as their performance went on.

I didn’t catch any of The Myriad’s set because they have an awful, awful name.

tags: indie music  most serene republic  music  concert reviews  kinski  

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