VAS/A HAPPY DEATH/ADVISORY/LITTLE BARRIE @ Dante's 5/30/2012
Great thing about shows like this - touring headliner (in this case, Little Barrie, a power trio from Nottingham, England) blows into town without any support attached - is that it gives relatively unknown local bands a chance to hone their act from an honest-to-goodness real stage. The not-so-great thing about shows like this is that it gives...(etc etc). Vas aren't bad, just raw and in need of seasoning (though there's plenty of salt in some of the lyrics. "Take me, rape me" figures in the chorus of their second song). A trio, with a woman bass player/singer, a 30-something guitarist/singer (who is more than a little seasoned, some tidy/fierce soloing as it happens) and a working man's drummer, they trade in a somewhat unfocused, shadowy 90s sound, with hints of both punk snarl and some basic bar chord midwest indie. Earnest, if a bit ploddy, once they find a following, once they find a few more hooks (that don't belong to Blondie - the set's penultimate song couldn't owe more to "One Way Or Another" if it took out a mortgage with it), they'll hopefully find their footing. For now, the stage at Dante's feels too big for them.
Happy Death, another trio, kicks it up the proverbial notch straightaway. Singer's playing a Gibson, has a curious early adolescent voice that somehow works and the opening 2-minute boogie shuffle thingy is a welcome hiccup in the evening. Next is an indie psych, White Stripey garage number though not slavish to any of those adjectives. Though 'now' enough in appearance and attitude, sonically they wouldn't sound out of place on a bill with Mountain in 1969. Confusing? Yeah, but in a quite promising way. They veer from the aforementioned almost T-Rex stylee to plaintive factory town lament to flat out rock assault with punky aggression. I call this a good thing. They aren't plundering the style spectrum for the sake of it but because they can, and it suits them. Their card (yes, a business card, a band with a business card that's more like a mini-flyer), handed me by the drummer during Vas's set, proclaims it's "rock and roll for the end of the world," and whereas I would have thought that maybe death metal and not Happy Death would fill that bill, I'm, um, happy at the prospect of this particular alternative. I'll take the peeling of psyched-up garage riffs over growling sludge any day of the apocalypse.
If nothing else, Advisory help propel one of the most abiding truisms of our (rock 'n' roll) time: a trio is too big a band. Just a mouthy guitarist and a mouthy drummer, they nonetheless pull out the panache necessary to command the stage. Playing a kind of ragged trailer park blues rock mayhem, what they lack in self-confidence is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. The drummer with his Keef Richards bandana and the guitarist dude with his mohawky quiff tear it up as best as two delightfully rude gentlemen can. Here they lurch into some go-to-hell rockabilly, there they descend into a faux-weepy ballad like Jack Nitzsche if he'd been raised in a flea market (later I'd be reminded of The Minutemen if Boon Watt & Hurley had been raised on a diet of Flatt & Scruggs and hillbilly crack). Sometimes they tear it up pretty good, sometimes they just tear it up, but whatevs, they're a couple of good time lads well worth a Friday night's worth of whoop-up even if it's only Wednesday.
OK, I gotta admit, it's a damn shame that a band the stature of Little Barrie (three well-received LPs since 2005, #'s 1 & 3 produced by Edwyn Collins, #2 by Dan The Automator), in a rare, first-ever appearance, attracts a crowd of fewer than thirty people to Dante's on a balmy late spring evening. Chalk it up to some decent competition in town at other venues, but we may as well be at a rehearsal. Which, come to think of it, turns out to be a damn nice thing for those of us smart enough to be there (and besides, in 1979 I saw Killing Joke in a North London pub in the company of about a dozen other punters, and that wasn't nearly as good a show as LB put on this evening). Located on a classic British spectrum between Small Faces and Dr Feelgood, this is unapologetic working class
rawk, loud, choppy-tight and addictive. On second song 'Twisted Little Blade,' guitarist-singer-band namesake Barrie Cadogan and bassist Lewis Wharton trade vocals with a petulant abandon while drummer Virgil [son of Steve] Howe does this ecstatic rhythm thing that parses the territory between Dave Grohl and and a Sufi dancer that happens to be doing his thing while sitting down. And again I'm struck: charismatic guitarist with typical British dexterity a la Johnny Marr, bassist in quiet young John Entwistle mode, drummer as just described, where's the audience? Whatever the reasons - second LP "Stand Your Ground" didn't find a US label, new album "King Of The Waves" has been out less than a year - if the band continues to bang it out at the pace they do tonight, they'll attract a small army of follower everywhere they go. Fifth song 'Precious Pressure' brings it all together, a proto-Stone Roses groove, a guitar explosion worthy of, say, Humble Pie (or, yes, the Faces) and though it's unashamedly retro, it's too damn iconic-sounding to ignore and seems to leap over the decades and land in our laps, which for most of us don't exist, of course, as we're too busy being up and dancing. Throughout their set, in fact, this is what they're doing, playing at the speed of dance, the jerking and bobbing-of-head type, jungle urban rock and roll, baby, and we're all as unselfconsciously happy to be moving to it as they are to be playing it. Next-to-last offering 'New Diamond Love' is a kind of singalong that morphs into a righteous kick-out-the-jams rock monster while still retaining its earworm hook and as such wins highlight of the night honors, though 'Love You' off "Stand Your Ground" is right behind it, both literally and insofar as the highlight reel goes, quoting as it does the raucous riff from 'Train Kept A-Rollin' and by this time there's a low boil of delirium trembling through the room and most of us are exuberantly drained enough that the lack of an encore comes as welcome news. After the show I talked at some length with Lewis about the band's history, how they've gelled since Virgil's come aboard and the rather odd nature of this tour (playing places they've never been before, some of them quite out of the way). First though, I apologized for the sparse attendance to which he politely demurred. "No," he said, "in some ways we prefer playing to a smaller room like this. That way we can see how much everyone's enjoying themselves," (or something to that effect, don't quote me quoting him) and I have to say I see his point, as everyone I happened to glanc at during Little Barrie's set was
clearly enjoying themselves. So hey, rare as it was that Little Barrie was in town, should they come blowing into Portland again, even if it is on a Wednesday in late May or, for that matter, a Monday in the darkest middle of January, don't you dare miss them.
