Why Are We Holding This Stupid Plastic Hand? (TV on the Radio, Matt Pond PA, Voxtrot, Prospect Park Bandshell/Birdmonster, Gaskets, Sin-é)

Concert overload, this weekend.  Chronologically, then:

Third Strike Dept.:  I’m just never going to like Voxtrot (myspace).  The songs are catchy, the craft is solid... but they’re just too nice and twee and pathetic to, y’know, rock.  If I saw them at the beach, I’d probably kick sand in their face.

I first caught them during CMJ and said the requisite nice things, but complained the performance was missing oomph; that was an afternoon gig, and those are never really trustworthy.  Then there was the last half of a troubled (equipment failures, overzealous drunken fangirl) Mercury Lounge set in April; I granted them a rare second mulligan.  This final chance was low-key and outside, a limp swing and a miss.

They hop, they don’t jump.  Frontman Ramesh Srivastava’s honest, at least:  He will never sound like he’s ever lived or loved.  Everything’s so damned polite.  They have a number called “Soft and Warm,” for fuck’s sake; that’s a description of a stool sample, not a song title.  “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives” is a set of balls away from being a decent Ted Leo song.

Here, as the first act of three on a cool Friday evening, the band was sweet (of course) and nervous about playing on a big stage.  Srivastava made the foolish faux pas of telling the crowd they were going to play a new song... but would instead premiere that at some other show.  Whatever.  At least they didn’t play their execrable cover of Talking Heads’ “Heaven.”  That thing reminds me of that SNL skit where Paul Simon’s vision of hell is an elevator pumping out Muzak versions of his hits; David Byrne, unless he’s got a strong masochistic streak, will want to stay away from Voxtrot happenings.

And Boogie Nights was a good flick, but I don’t know that there’s cause for a sequel:

Ever wonder what it’d be like, having the most boring band in all creation?  Why not e-mail Matt Pond (myspace) and ask?

Not even worth talking about the music.  During the set, the wind picked up and storm clouds moved in – it would later drizzle, a little – and Pond spent an inordinate amount of time worrying about the weather, paying lip service to dropping songs... but he played what felt like a whole set.  Hell, it felt like two sets.

Hilarious, hearing the MCs from Celebrate Brooklyn describe the band’s role in the night’s line-up:  Supposedly a showcase for Brooklyn-based indie-rock – we’ve apparently “adopted” Austin-based Voxtrot, and Pond (whose band has a whole ‘nother state in its name) said this was his last night before moving out of Brooklyn – our hosts said they were looking for envelope-pushing, edge-cutting.  And they came up with this?  Someone let Parts & Labor know it’s time to move to Queens.

TV on the Radio (myspace) came out on fire, smothered themselves.

I like this band, a lot, when I can find them in their music.  This was the sixth or seventh time I’ve seen TVotR and, though there have been good performances since it, the best was the first, in the basement of the 1st Unitarian Church in Philadelphia.  There’s something dangerous about their sound – equally dangerous to their sound – and its eagerness to absorb everything around it.  In that basement, in that city, you had the all-ages egalitarian intimacy R5 shows usually have, you had the gospel sleeping overhead, you had that famed Philly doo-wop out on the corners.  Everything worked.

This show at Prospect Park was, in a lot of ways, just like the band’s show at the Bowery in April; so much stuff was sucked into the show there wasn’t anything to enjoy but a whole lotta wholatta.  Backup singers, bongos, the Antibalas horn section.  At some point, another instrument or twenty just turns to smoke and mirrors.  Like this:  Guitarist/production mastermind David Sitek came out with wind chimes hanging from his guitar’s head (Brooklyn Vegan has a great pic (2nd down)).  How cool is that?  Not very, when you have them jangjingjangling all show long.  I imagine chimes aren’t popular in Oklahoma.  Or during monsoon season.  It’s like being run over by a fucking Mr. Softee truck.

You, you’re at work, reading this, right?  You’re trying to look busy, but you’re surfing the Internet.  In spirit, you were on stage, in Prospect Park, Friday night.  At times like these I’m reminded of Peter Schickele’s intro to P. D. Q. Bach’s Concerto for Horn and Hardart (buy):  “When the bagpipes are playing, you can’t hear anything else... but the lute looks nice.”

So the band looked nice.  Singer Tunde Adebimpe has become one hell of a frontman and – in contrast to the timid openers – used every inch of the stage.  At least, those inches not consumed by Kyp Malone’s hair (The 6th Borough).  Time spent on the road, this spring, with NIN and Bauhaus really served the band well (Pitchfork collected some YouTube vids of collaborations between TVotR, Reznor and Murphy – very cool, even though the vocal styles never really mesh).  Crazy with the energy.  And “The Wrong Way” is a great choice to kick off a set, the way it turns any house into a revival.

But then...

Since before it was even finished, the press has rushed to anoint TV on the Radio’s new album as their OK Computer, promising grand statements and crossover accessibility.  What I hear is a lot of et cetera.  Return to Cookie Mountain (Are bands trying to scare listeners away?  What does it say about the state of music, today, that this isn’t hands-down the dumbest album title of the year?  Let’s mash it up, then, with its closest competitor, and call it He Poos Cookie Mountain.) – which has made its way across the net over the past several months, and is streaming at NME  – has a strong sound, but is hardly a collection of strong songs.  Each time I listen to it, the first track – whichever track comes up – always strikes me as the Best Song Ever.  But then... as the album goes on, everything grinds into the same white noise.  Tracks can whistle in or bang on through with full-on Stomp-everything percussiveness... but always boil down to the same mettle.

TVotR’s strongest songs rise above their sound.  “Young Liars” has an anthemic build and sweep the band still has yet to match.  “Ambulance” – the traditional encore, tellingly left off Friday night’s set list – is simple and direct and human.  It connects.

The extended band, here, didn’t do this; how they didn’t bothered me.  When they all stooped to pound on their whoozawhatzits and whambamdinglers and pingpangwhompmakers, they seemed to turn away from us to do so.  It was less a party than a self-involved art-noisemaking experience.  It’s sort of the opposite of what happens when Peelander-Z passes out pots and pans to its audience.  It felt exclusive.  Which is not what I  want to feel at an open-air, free, homecoming show.

*

Even though TVotR is David Bowie’s “favorite band”, and even though he guests on Cookie Poo, lightning failed to strike twice.  C’mon, Dave, get out a little.  It’s not like you’re doing anything else.

*

• Also at Prospect Park (and, yes, everyone liked everything better than I):  Visiting Canuck Chromewaves, Battering Room, Bed for the Scraping, BrooklynVegan, In the Buzz, Indie-licious, Ryspace (who has Voxtrot’s set in mp3s), Soundbites, Status Ain’t Hood, Spec’s Outrage...


• A couple more of my photos here


• Muzzle of Bees has some live (from another date) TVotR mp3s


• YouTube, from the night:  TVotR, Voxtrot, Matt Pond Zzzzzz 


• Again, you can stream Cookie Puss at NME (Interscope, the record’s US distributor seems determined to bury it; they’re putting the thing out almost two full months after the UK release (and the subsequent buzz), when the band will be touring Europe.)


• Ha, ha, mildly amusing Cookie promos, including one with ex-nevernude David Cross


• TVotR, themselves, have a Flickr page and a blog


• As does Voxtrot (Flickr, blog)

I ignored San Francisco’s Birdmonster (myspace) for a long time because there was all this tiresome gushy blogblogblog about them, and because they’re called Birdmonster.  It’s one of those “Did it have to be that dumb?” band names.  But at least they’re not called “Bird ‘n Monster,” or “Birdwolfmonster,” or “¡Birdmonster Say Yeah!” (though “Die, Birdmonster!” would be cool).

Anyway, it turns out they play the rock and the roll.  We need more of that.

Their record (which is not, thankfully, called Birdmonster Craps Baked Goods IX:  Bum Crumbs (remixes, B-sides, errata)) is good for a few spins.  Sure, the lyrics are sometimes meat-thermometer-in-the-ear awful, and there are fewer stand-out tunes than you’d hope for; but almost every song contains a surprise of some sort.  No mean feat, that, these days.

The killer track is a twangy, aggressive thing called “The Bar in the Back of the Basement” that sounds, more or less, like it crawled out from where it says it is.  It starts of with a nice little groove, then revs into what I want to call carny rock but isn’t.  My Music DescribOthon’s in the shop.  So, here:

Birdmonster – The Bar in the Back of the Basement (mp3) (buy)

Listen to more at Hype Machine.

There were surprises live, too.  I hadn’t listened to No Midnight for a while, and when the band came out with “Ice Age” – which opens slowly, and is achingly sincere – I groaned.  But by song’s end, the band had left pieces of themselves scattered all-round.  Exploded, like.  Much humbler expectations exceeded, here, but these guys clearly have a blast all thirty-five minutes they’re up on stage.  They share.  It’s fun, and by gum, that oughta be law.

The woman in the photo above, by the way, isn’t a member of the band.  It’s this person, who is a (or, possibly, the) coordinator of new media or somesuchthing at Columbia Capitol Records; I can’t find any upfront full disclosure bit on her site.

Once you meet the New Media you’ll find it’s same as the Old Media, and I find it a bit... depressing and dissuasive how it seems, sometimes, some music blogs slurp hungrily at the industry teat; pat them on the back, they’ll burp your press release right up.  That’s not an endorsement, it’s just gas.

Anyway, none of that, right now:  This woman – after having been given a tambourine by B. Monster’s lead singer/guitarist – got up with the band and rocked the hell out.  She was clearly not afraid to look like a complete idiot, and therefore didn’t.  So, props, Ms. Columbia Capitol Records New Media Coordinator Person.

Speaking of complete idiots, The Gaskets (myspace) were batting clean-up after the BM crowd flushed out.  A pair of dudes – yeah, dudes – from Richmond, VA (one lives in New York, now), they’re basically a sequencer, a pair of microphones, some pre-rehearsed dance moves.  Press play, don’t take them seriously, and they’re good hazy-minded late-nite fun.  They run in place for a whole song; I wished they’d done that all set.

Yeti’s a huge fan.

Be warned:  They cover “Young Turks.”  No one should do that.  Not even ironically.

tags: gaskets  voxtrot  concert photos  birdmonster  concert reviews  tv on the radio  matt pond pa  antibalas  

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