You Will Get Your Reward (Low/His Name is Alive, Southpaw)

I was so excited when Low announced this concert.  Not only were they coming to my neighborhood – the F train, it brings me home, it brings me down – but to a smaller venue than normal.  I’d seen them twice, previously, in sold-out Bowery Ballroom gigs; before lead singer Alan Sparhawk got all funny in the head last year, they were booked at cavernous Webster Hall.  Smaller = better.

Sometimes.

Had I thought harder, I’d have been dreading this.  Southpaw, for some reason, always seems to draw a disrespectful crowd; perhaps it’s the bar’s proximity to the stage, but there’s constant yammering throughout performances.  The house knows this and they crank the sound up to compensate, but every opening act is eventually overwhelmed.  There’s usually more tolerance given headliners, but what hope can a slowcore band have on a Friday night?

There was the problem with the room... and the reputation.  Normal Low fans are notorious shhh-ers, and the band’s notoriety has grown to the extent that casual attendees know what to expect:  Patience will be demanded; for some, rewarded.  Unfortunately, the group’s latest CD, one of last year’s best, was relatively revved-up:  producer David Fridmann brought out a boomier, brisker band, and that brought people with amped-up expectations into an already intolerant space.

There, they found that Low is still Low.  Twelve years at the slow and steady, and they’re going to keep plodding along.  Like it, or lump it.

There’s one guy I’d particularly like to lump:  Some pathetic, drunken European schmuck kept trying to make the show about him.  Throughout the performance, he desperately blubbered about everything.  The opening song, “Monkey,” had him ambling from side to side, aping, “No, not da monkey!  It’s all about the monkey!” until his similarly drunk friends erupted into embarrassed giggles.  When shhh’d or stared at, he’d acknowledge you by looking at his friends and blaming them.  Idiot.  There should be a website where Biggest Crowd Moron photos are posted; this guy would be the mascot.

“Dinosaur It!”  He kept screaming, requesting the song “Dinosaur Act.”  “DINOSAUR EEEET!”  And to the band’s credit, they never played it.  Sparhawk is, I think, a natural contrarian; you’d have to be, to pioneer this kind of “rock.”  In this smaller setting, he fought back harder.  Even though several numbers were included from the two most recent albums, including a couple of the poppier ones (“California,” “Canada”), the set list left off most of the group’s biggest crowd-pleasers and favored the obscure.  “Dragonfly,” an unreleased track (which you can hear about ten minutes into this Minnesota public radio performance) was included, as was “Murderer,” a song  released only on an out-of-print vinyl 10” (Tape Delay, thankfully, recently posted an MP3).  The band’s prettiest songs often put drummer Mimi Parker’s uplifting voice  in front; here, the only song she led was the sullen “Condescend” from the Songs for a Dead Pilot EP.

People naturally made requests, but they fell on defiant ears.  Once, someone called out, “[Japanese name] wants you to play [song].”  Sparhawk recognized the name, and said, “What?”  When everyone in the crowd chimed in with their own titles, he shut them up and said, “You – only you.”  And then told that person they wouldn’t be able to play their request.  Or the next one they made.  To the third song offered, he said, “Maybe that one.  We’ll see.”

Low can be an incredible live act.  This time they were... fine, okay, and the early parts of the set kept the house as quiet as I’ve ever heard it.  Their new bassist – longtime member Zak Sally recently left the group – was competent, reserved, dull; it’s amazing how important Sally’s role was, onstage, how 2-D they seem without him.  A lot of the band’s effect depends on creating a musical space – space to question, space to ruminate, space to grow – and they couldn’t pull that off, especially not here.

Bizarrely, at the end of the main set, Sparhawk switched on a stage-level, rotating colored light display.  They left it on through the two-song encore, and shamelessly finished with a brand new work.  By then, the more disappointed concertgoers had trickled out.  Not Monkey-boy, though; he stayed through to a very bitter end:  “A totally new song!” he mock-whispered, after his friends informed him that’s what was being played.  “How great is it that they’re ending with a totally new song that nobody even knows?!”

*

Death Vessel sounds like a great name for a heavy metal band, but it isn’t; Joel Thibodeau is a man, but he doesn’t sound like one. 

I came in half-way through his guy-and-guitar act, and his confident, high-pitched voice would have held any other room captive.  At one point, he dropped the guitar, went with voice and finger-snaps and didn’t lose an ounce of presence.  Unfortunately, less is never more at Southpaw.

DV is, I suppose, officially a collective, and these mp3s feature more than just Thibodeau; the first one’s a doozy:

• Death Vessel – Deep in the Horchada (mp3)


• Death Vessel – Mandan Dink (mp3)


• Buy

Thibodeau joined Iron & Wine and Calexico during their Webster Hall show for the “Wild Horses” encore; he’s back to open for José Gonzalez and The Books at the Bowery Ballroom next month.  Other dates on his site.

*

I thought I knew a little of what I was in for when His Name is Alive came onstage; by the time they got off I had little idea what I’d heard.

The Michigan collective, based around the bedroom twiddlings of Warn (née Warren) Defever, was too interesting to be awful, but not interesting enough to be great.  With that moniker and a slot supporting the merry Mormons in Low, I assumed they would be some sort of faith-based initiative.  And their very first song was a dirge (I think it was called “This World is Not My Home”) about wanting to leave this life for a better place.  When it looked like they were about to pass out the Kool-Aid, they handed out shakers – jingle bells, tambourines, etc. – instead.

There was no pinning the sound down – which probably makes for fascinating listening if you’re a devoted fan (and they must have their fans:  HNIA – the name apparently some sort of reference to Abraham Lincoln, not Jesus – has been around for something like sixteen years, and recently released a 10-CD retrospective)... but as a first-time listener it felt less eclectic than elusive.  The set ran the gamut from rhythmic circle jerks to bouncy Carpenter (Karen/Richard, again, not Jesus) pop; you’d just be getting used to some Chicago Transit-style schmaltz when Defever would let his guitar rip with some classic rock riff.  Free jazz sax would give way to almost monotonal synth lines.  There was just no way in to this music. (Try a few songs out on their myspace page, and check out their Brothers Quay-directed video, “Are We Still Married.”)

The lead singer – I think her name was Andy FM – had a dull voice and some creepy affectations:  Every so often her large eyes would bug out, now and again she’d start dancing The Robot.  Defever said it was the band’s first time in New York – whether he was trolling for cheap applause or meant this incarnation of the band was unclear – and mumbled that they’d like to move here, before dubbing an instrumental “I Hate New Jersey.”  On the floor, a woman sat Indian style squeezing a small pump organ. Death Vessel joined the band for a few songs, alternating between bass and drums – odd roles for a guest.

Odd.  Mostly, it was all just odd.

tags: death vessel  low  his name is alive  

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