HOLOGRAMS / THE BE HELDS / VICE DEVICE - Mississippi Studio, 19 Sep 2012
I shouldn't even be here. Y'know how sometimes you're so godawful wicked tired you just canNOT drag yourself out the door no matter who's playing? I'm at least half way there tonight if not three quarters. I should be home attending to my droopy eyes and anemic knees, sitting at the computer posting post-punk on the Songs From Under The Floorboards facebook page. But there's only one problem. The band I've hauled myself out to see is Holograms, a scathingly good band young band from Stockholm I'd be a bloody fool to miss, especially at the Mississippi. I'd never forgive myself. A very wise person once said to me "Do everything you can to avoid regret." I try to live by that, and not being here tonight would constitute a serious betrayal of that premise. First though, there's the matter of support.
The Vice Device are a 3-piece from Portland and are another case of 'Why-haven't-I-heard-of-them-before?' (especially considering, as I later find out, they've been out playing live for over two years). I immediately want them for my show. Two singer/synth players (synthists? Yes, I'm keeping that one), both of whom also wield single drumsticks and bang away on electronic drum pads while the hip-hatted bassist stands a-tween them thumping out a righteous dark thrum.
Funny, to me at least, is the synthist stage right (Bobby Kaliber) wearing a Gary Numan t-shirt (by appearance it's suitably seasoned to be an original), since Vice Device amount to what I always wished Numan sounded like, more visceral, less icy. They do have at times a similarly swirly sound but it's more gutteral and driven, not so
sang froid.
Not long into their set stage left synthist Andrea K has a sax hung around her neck, the bass player's percussing on his strings with (another) drumstick and a few measures down the road we're hit with this type of melodic discordancy that's tricky to make work and sets one's teeth deliciously on edge. Another neat trick at play is Bryan Carr playing
way up on the neck to provide some lead guitar textures. A resourceful trio, to say the least.
The horn playing, by the way, skronks agreeably between Ornette Coleman and X-Ray Spex, spazzingly unhinged enough to get and keep your attention but not flying totally out of frame. Overall, in case you couldn't tell, a damn splendid find, a promising lot. Quite sadly, there are only eighteen of us watching. All the more for us, I guess.
Missoula's The Be Helds aren't really from there any more, they more or less live here now like everyone else. Drummer is thrashy enough that he knocks the floor tom off its feet early in the second song. Then again, maybe that's no surprise, since he informs us he found the drum set in a dumpster. There's just two of them, drummer and guitarist, and they're a charmingly shambolic pair ("Johnny Thunders meets Big Star meets a Jonathan Richman garage band" is what I scrawl in typically lazy rock journalism shorthand), as intent on a good time as they are on strict musicality. I mean, they're competent enough but that seems a bit beside the point. They are also rather hilarious, very relaxed in an offhand way and are the perfect palate-cleansing tonic between the more jagged post-punk sonics of the opener and headliner.
Holograms are a vividly exciting band and it's beyond perplexing why the attendance tonight makes the word 'sparse' sound crowded. It's too often said, but in a just world the venue would be seething with a sweating crowd perched on their tiptoes in anticipation. I truly hope it happens for Holograms elsewhere along this tour because it certainly isn't here.
When I first saw mention of this show I was a little surprised. A band from Stockholm on Captured Tracks touring the West Coast. Rare. But here's how they're doing it, at least in part: the drummer is borrowing that beater of a drumset from the Be Helds. Economy, the very ticket. But however they're managing it, whatever they have to do, I'm more than happy they made it.
Immediately a sonic assault, but one marked by one of the things that sets them instantly apart, the ringing, adroit lead guitar line of Anton Spetze, the spiraling Korg synth (Anton's brother Filip), pummeling drums (Mr Anton Strandberg) and a reckless, perfectly doom driving (and strummed, mostly) bass from singer Andreas Lagerstrom, all in all an inspired Beowulfian, roofbeam-raising noise that only the young can produce, with a precision that assures that the borrowed drum kit stays in place. The song is called
Blaze On A Hillside, it's an utterly new tune that lasts over 5 1/2 minutes and knocks me out. Those few of us here are off to a gallopingly good start, it's going to be a lucky night for us.
It being a live setting, the mix isn't such that one can easily distinguish the lyrics, and if you didn't know that they were singing in English you might convince yourself that they're singing in Swedish but the absolute truth is, it doesn't matter. The old saw about the universality of music certainly applies here. Holograms speak in the widely spoken language of post-punk, that sound that enters your ears, expands in your chest and persuades you that some kind of magic blend of cynicism and transcendence is easily possible. Tonight, as the band transition into
Chasing My Mind (off their self-titled debut album on Captured Tracks), they somehow keep reminding me of The Stranglers even as they bear them little resemblance beyond the 4-piece setup with a prominent keyboard presence. I think it comes down to intensity and cohesion, and the fact Lagerstrom over there on bass does indeed resemble a stocky Swede version of JJ Burnell, the same rather louche stage demeanor.
By the time we get to the trio of songs midset,
ABC City, Monolith and
Fever, the band have hit a stride that belies the smallness of the crowd. Holograms' intrinsic strength is the pairing of a kind of Harley-tailpipe roar with scything melody (and of course that bass tone, always keeping the post-punk shape in place). Lagerstrom's vocals don't have a wide variance in pitch but do exert a rather bellowing authority, especially when twinned with guitarist Spetze's singing, as on
Monolith, a well-named epic monument of a song that begins innocently enough but soon enough builds itself into a racing, thunderous, heart-racing centerpiece that, even though my fatigue keeps me from moving much, nonetheless leaves me breathless, that good kind of breathlessness where you feel a bit dizzy but empowered at the same time. Which is a pretty succinct descriptor of both Holograms' sound and the effect it has and as such reminds me even more deeply of experiences seeing bands in London and San Francisco in the 1978-82 heyday of the form. In that respect, the impact they had on me while seeing them live, they could have been the Skids at the Rainbow, The Damned at the Old Waldorf, Killing Joke in a tiny pub in North London (where, in fact, there were far fewer in attendance than are here tonight). Bands like Holograms (and there are others) exude that effect without in any way being slavish to a particular brand. In a word, they thrill, and I'm thankful I got to see them in a setting like this.
Perhaps most exciting, final song
Hidden Structures is, again, like the set's opener, a brand new song, or at least unfamiliar to those of us besotted by the album, and with it comes a tantalizing glimpse into Holograms' next LP. Though just as rousing and pulse-pounding as anything else this evening, it has a bit more space to it, Filip's synth throughout the song wandering up and down the melody, exploring but never drifting, finding itself with far more breathing room than usual while the rest of the band provides the muscle and structure (ha!) necessary to maintain the band's signature style. It leaves us with a taste for Holograms Mk II, and I for one can hardly wait.
