CLUBLAND!

DIRTY PROJECTORS / WYE OAK - CRYSTAL BALLROOM 7/25/2012


OK, let's get this out of the way straight off: a band like Dirty Projectors should not be popular. Peculiar jutting time signatures, drum patterns that splat and fade in spastic bursts, elliptical, often slyly biting lyrics. How is that a recipe for success in an age that sees Mumford & Sons rise to the top of the indie heap? (no offense; I like M&S but there's nothing too adventurous about them, you have to admit) I suppose, if you're going to 'blame' anyone for this anomaly, it would have to be Radiohead. They burst the dam of pent-up, oddly angular experimental rock music over a decade ago, down which sluiced the likes of Animal Collective, Mum, cLOUDDEAD and countless others. Dirty Projectors, however, just might represent the apogee of this trend. I'll get to the details in a moment, but I truly cannot think of a band currently active and anywhere near this popular - the Crystal is at capacity tonight - that consistently skims the uppermost edges of what's possible in the realm of pop music. Yes, I suppose, Radiohead would be another but seeing them live these days is a very rare and very dear prospect indeed. Fortunately, we have Dirty Projectors. But first, tonight anyway, we have Wye Oak.

Wye Oak are from Baltimore and are named after the honorary state tree of Maryland, a gigantic white oak whose originating acorn is thought to have been germinated in 1540. Wye Oak the band, while appearing to be considerably younger, put out a sound that is just about as massive, and they do it right off, which is a bit of a shock considering there's only two of them, blond guitar siren Jenn Wasner and drummer (for now) Andy Stack. Wasner's red Fender is being run through some kind of ringing treatment and it's simply a bloody marvelous sound, full in equal measure of clarity and muscle. Oh, and reverb, did I mention reverb? Not a drenching, shoegazey reverb, but just enough to let her solos carry mystery into the already steaming air of the Crystal. The hit I get from Ms Wasner is an updated indie Lita Ford with a hint of Chrissie Hynde's stage presence and no, I'm not exaggerating.

Four songs in Stack switches to bass and rather than the percussive playing I'd expected from a drummer we instead get virtuosic fret gymnastics worthy of White Denim's Steve Terebecki. As the song evolves into a kind of lilty drone, anchored by an 808-ish dancey beat, he's at the keyboard, bass abandoned while she lets off some melodic sheets of tremolo-ed guitar. A lovely moment, proving that in Wye Oak's case at least, two is more than enough.

Though their sound does in fact, on occasion, soar toward the edge of the shoegaze stratosphere, there's something too delicate about their melodies for it to ever get lost in there. So let's dub them neo-shoegaze pop, how about? The drums, by the way, are profound, a huge sound, think cannons. And in case I haven't gotten it across, the girl can play herself some guitar. Believe. Even the song mid-set that was marred by a steady current of feedback was surmounted by Wasner's authority over each of her six strings. Wye Oak's one of those duo bands whose sound is so giant you keep looking for the other band members at first but once you've convinced yourself there aren't any, you settle in to a kind of subtle amazement and let the songs spread over you like, yes, a legendary oak (you knew I was going to have to work that metaphor in there somehow).

This was my first time seeing Dirty Projectors and approaching the show I must confess to some apprehension. Swing Lo Magellan, the record they're touring at the moment, is, to a degree greater than even their previous, breakthrough album Bitte Orca, nothing if not a series of very complex set pieces, bendy and surprising and scrupulously arranged. In other words, songs that might struggle to come across in a live setting. To say that such thinking was misplaced is the greatest understatement of the year so far.

After opening with Swing Lo's title track the band venture into "Offspring Are Blank," the first track on that same album. It's as complex (that word again, it might show up a lot in this post) a piece of art-rock trickery on record as we've heard in some time and lo (ha!) and behold, it's exactly as impressive live, from the almost slave-spiritual background vocals it begins with that carry through the verse segments of the song (when not interrupted by a ferocious rocking explosion of a chorus) to the proto-typical Projectors chopped rhythmic structure. Just plain masterful and it shows very early in their set just how much at the peak of their powers they are.

This is, of course, David Longstreth's band, and it's run as more or less a benevolent dictatorship. The others - bassist Nat Baldwin, second guitarist Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle on keys and drummer Brian McComber - contribute ideas and make suggestions but the vision is Longstreth's alone and in its singularity I'm reminded of Captain Beefheart. Whereas the Captain trafficked in distorted, contorted blues motifs, Longstreth opts more for latent prog-pop strains flavored by messed-with Afrobeat guitar figures and rhythms and the aforementioned gospel-y touches, most often evident in crazed precise handclap patterns.

As for Longstreth's presence, it's unmistakably charismatic. Maybe it's just the almost-shoulder-length hair flying down around his face and the southpawness of his playing (he plays a right-handed guitar left-handed and upside down) but he can't help but remind of another leftie guitarist - this one from the Northwest - some 20 years ago: hugely talented, popular beyond expectation and a bit off-puttingly touchy at times in interviews. But he's got it, that it that defines pop greatness and from all indications he has the drive to keep making music this surpassingly great.

And oh dear, was it great. All but five of the sixteen songs in their set come from Swing Lo Magellan, with a smattering of Bitte Orca and Mount Wittenberg Orca, their collaboration with Bjork. "Socialites," off the new record, is one of those with the Afro-beat tinge to it, Longstreth's palm wine guitar bringing a North African Mediterranean breeze to Portland. That song and the next ("Beautiful Mother" off the Bjork record) are so beautifully, precisely executed that it has me scratching down in my notebook "a wonderfully challenging band, the dual female vox on "..Mother" are truly a thing of wonder, almost yelping but harmonic as hell. Hard to describe how effective they are, otherworldly yet grounded." And the hits to the wonder reflex just kept on coming.

"Gun Has No Trigger" is a skewed avant-pop soul masterpiece. Bitte Orca's "Useful Chamber" is one of their most complex songs (by now you know that that's saying something, yeah?), crazy with changes and tempo mash-ups but it comes off perfectly, perfectly, ending with a mad dash into a frenetic chaos that makes total sense. Astounding, and in the end, just plain joyous. Throughout the night, Longstreth's guitar playing is somehow both rather feral and exceedingly precise, J. Mascis if he were Pat Metheny. And special credit has to go to McComber, whipping out these bizarre rhythmic tropes with the confidence of a young Bill Bruford. And though perhaps a tad overused, the percussive handclapping is as unerring as I've ever seen it, and amazingly, in another sign of how beloved and innately understood this band is by their fans, the audience quite often joins in, not missing a fractured beat.

As the show progresses, the screen-projected, made-up heiroglyphics behind them increase in (here it is again) complexity, becoming a dizzying wall of indecipherable but intriguing script, and you can't help but believe that such was the intention, to reinforce the extent to which Dirty Projectors are able to create a joyous, intense, irresistible and compelling density that leaves the mouth agape, the brain spinning and the heart in love. As we were leaving, I said to my friend Chris how much my prog-pop friends on facebook are missing out. Dirty Projectors are a gateway back into modern music for anyone who feels that a certain intelligent adventurousness has been missing since the heyday of King Crimson or Kraan or fill-in-the-blank. Meanwhile, for those (overwhelmingly much younger) fans selling out venue after venue on this tour, well, they'll get to say, in twenty, thirty years time, "Yeah, I got to see Dirty Projectors live and they were AMAZING!"

CLUBLAND!

ALAN RESNICK / NO JOY / LOWER DENS @ Mississippi Studios, 5 July 2012

Hi again, sorry I've been absent for a while, but, y'know, summertime and all plus I've been a bit busy getting my KZME radio show set up, Songs From Under The Floorboard, a show dedicated to post-punk, then now and in the future, from around the world, the country and here at home. Anywhere, in other words, that I can find it. Airs Monday nights 8pm-10pm on KZME, 107.1fm, streaming on the web at 1071fm.org. OK, then, shameless plug out of the way, on with the post.

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According to the weather guy's little snippet in the Oregonian this morning, the Portland summer began today. Which is why, perhaps, the thermostat inside Mississippi Studios is set to mild icebox. "Why's it so cold in here?" I hear someone ask as he walks past and I don't know but I suspect that in a couple of hours, somewhere near the end of No Joy's set or early in Lower Dens', we'll all be grateful. Might get hot in here, a prediction given some credence by the nature-as-hothouse imagery on the screen behind the stage as we await Alan Resnick: shoots of flora bursting forth in progligate slow-motion. The mundane miracle of it is mesmerizing, busting open as if in song, tendrils climbing tree trunks and other seemingly alien life forms emerging from soil and water in ways so animated as to make Fantasia seem a rickety educational film from the fourth grade. Oh alright, I'm exaggerating a tad but regardless, should be an interesting night.

Alan Resnick is a very brave individual, if a touch zany, a kind of wunderkind nerd that's dabbled in the the black arts (pocket protector division) of digital avatarism and came out the other side in a cartoon fantasy world. A short bit, done in the voice of a just-bar mitzvahed superhero, mildly amusing, reducible, if need be, to the equation [Pee Wee Herman - children + hipster beard = Alan Resnick]. Basically a Catskills routine created on an iPad but still, there's something disarming about the guy and anyway, what a sweet, refreshing way to begin the festivities.

A proto-post-grunge band (if that makes any sense), No Joy stand out for a number of reasons. There's a sunny, shoegazey disposition to many of their songs despite the rather brutal sonic assault. It's all women on guitars (two electric - founders and main band members Jasamine White-Gluz and Laura Lloyd - one bass) and a dude drumming with a forest green reptilian mask several years too young for him. In short, the band are quite arresting. I saw them with my daughter early last year open up for Best Coast and Wavves at the Hawthorne Theater (she now own all three 2010 albums by each of those band - Thanks, Dad!) and they haven't progressed much but, frankly, I'm not looking for that. Keep playing those shrouded washes of melodic mayhem, with your faces obscured by curtains of dirty blond hair and I'll be happy. It was just a 9-song set, with penultimate blast "Ghost Blonde" (from the LP of the same name on Mexican Summer) a highlight and I tell you what, next time I have a garage party, I know who I'm calling. No joy? Pish. I had a great time, everyone around me had a great time and I'll be waiting outside my local record emporium the day their second album comes out.

Though not at capacity (close though), The Miss is pretty well thronging for a Thursday night and make no mistake, it's Lower Dens they're here to see, to hear. Jana Hunter first came to us via an intimate, self-recorded solo album (Blank Unstaring Heirs Of Doom in 2005) that told us we had a premium gifted confessional songwriter on our hands. And she's still that, only now joined with guitarist William Adams, bassist Geoffrey Graham, drummer Nate Nelson, and keyboardist Carter Tanton to form a different beast altogether. It's a more than suitable symbiotic relationship that has resulted in two stunner LPs in the last 3 years (Twin Hand Movement on Gnomonsong in 2010 and the recently released Nootropics, on Ribbon Music). So, where on the spectrum do Lower Dens situate themselves? Well, you know that grayish bright area where dreams slip into nightmares and vice versa? Where the images are fleeting but vivid and there's portent and lure in equal measure? Hear that band playing there? That's Lower Dens. That they're about sonic sculpture is immediately apparent as they break out in an electronic preamble meant to either blow your mind or confuse your heartbeat or both. Soon, though, the band are ripping through a set dotted primarily by tracks from Nootropics. "Lamb/Candy," epic, panoramic and komische-like (or maybe call it komische-lite) is stirring and seems wonderfully endless and is more than a little jaw-dropping, Graham and Hunter singing together over updated Numanesque synth tones and a bass to drive you out into the Berlin night, albeit Berlin, Wisconsin, perhaps, as the native flavor of this band, their underlying Americaness, is never buried too deep in the mix, something open plains in the mood of these songs. Throughout the night I get that kind of hybridized hit from Lower Dens' sound and it's transportive and hypnotic, music for a midwest autobahn.

Jana spends as much time on keyboard as on guitar, going eerie, going echoey or simply rhythmic. But it's her singing that brings it, with its alluring mix of icy and heartfelt that makes the ears stare. Later in the set she'll take take it down a notch for "Don't Look Back" and the spell level doesn't sink an inch, it just stretches out into a more emotive intensity. For someone with such a slight frame, Ms Hunter has a commanding voice, pitched somewhere between belter and an alto muezzin, between a gelid gospel and and an unholy incantation. In my notes I wrote 'imagine Jason Pierce as a nun singing the bingo numbers in a trance' and, with an added bit of levitation, maybe, that somehow nails it.

"Tea Lights" raises a cheer from a very tuned-in audience and well it should, boasting as it does the finest melody Yo La Tengo never wrote, and in a sense they often remind me of YLT, that same melodic drive, often settling into a similarly homey pocket but what carries LD beyond that, whether it's floating, driving or some dizzy combination of both, is the ineradicable intercontinental cool. Lower Dens made it unmistakably apparent this evening that they're a major band, it's simply a thrill to have them around.

DJ Klyph presents: The Movement

Since the last time we spoke...

...the homie Tope from TxE released yet another project. This man is constantly working, and putting out quality material for real. Check the link above to pick up this new project from the northwest MC with features from HalfManHalf, LMNO and Stevo.

Destro Destructo made a visit through Welcome to the Neighborhood to announce the June release from the project he's been working on, rhyming over CashFlow beats. This time he recruited former partners in rhyme Snafu and NyQwil for a Frontline reunion. Remember to pick up these singles being released through Vinyl Fluid Records for free at the Bandcamp page. Check out a clip from Destro's visit:


Destro Destructo on Welcome to the Neighborhood with DJ Klyph May 2012 from DJ Klyph on Vimeo.

Runaway Productions has been promoting hip hop throughout the northwest and I had an opportunity to host him once again in the Neighborhood to discuss the state of Portland hip hop and plan for building the next NW Hip Hop Fest which Welcome to the Neighborhood with DJ Klyph is proud to be connecting with in a very real way (more to come on that soon).

June started off with a visit from G_Force aka Calvin Valentine of TxE. This was a meeting that was supposed to happen a while ago, so it was great to finally sit down with this talented MC/musician. Check this quick clip from that visit:

G_Force aka Calvin Valentine and Dain on Welcome to the Neighborhood with DJ Klyph June 2012 from DJ Klyph on Vimeo.

It was cool to connect with DaiN who came through as well to talk producing, his upcoming project and the FangTshida collaboration which includes members G_Force, DaiN, Sam Trump, N.VS, Cody DeCamry and Rio. Check out the write up on the project from Fresh Selects.

Aside from the TxE project and the FangTshida project is the Calvin Valentine album Red Eye Flights. Here is the video from the album's title cut:

**NOTE: Explict Language**

Be on the look for the next project, Green Team Official, slated to drop in July featuring the collaboration of G_Force and Lawz Spoken.

I'm a big fan of MC Luck-One Conscious and had a chance to meet producer Dizz at the King Of The Northwest listening party. We talked about connecting and it was truly a pleasure to chop it up with this talented cat. Aside from producing and singing hooks on projects for Matty, The Good Sin and others, he's been working on a collaboration with Luck-One entitled Critical Mass which is scheduled to drop late summer 2012. I got to play the first leak from the album on WTTN and man I'm telling you, this project is going to be nice! Check the link the podcast of the show for the 1st and 2nd hour, plus here's a video clip of the visit:


Dizz on Welcome to the Neighborhood with DJ Klyph June 2012 from DJ Klyph on Vimeo.

I was blessed to chat with Jake Espi of We Out Here Magazine about the show and some of my favorite moments. So cool to be included in what I believe is one of the best publications covering northwest music and lifestyle. If you haven't had a chance yet, check it out.

There a some things brewing for this summer, so be sure to stay connected every Tuesday from 7-9pm to 107.1FM, and you can catch past episode via podcast on iTunes. 

Until the next time we meet,

Blessings.

Klyph

CLUBLAND!

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.

DJ Klyph presents: The Movement

New music and new Neighborhood residents. Over the last month I've interviewed some of the hardest working artists, and have built community with some really good folk.

In April Chill Crew MCs Jon Belz and PC with producer Stewart Villain came through to talk about the upcoming collaboration "Return of The Chill" and premier the 1st single "Concrete". I had a chance to see them perform the single weeks later at The One Off in Portland at The Crown Room. These young cats bring the same energy to their stage performance that they bring to the record. You can check out the web sites chillcrewmusic.com and stewartvillain.com

The Sandpeople have been representing the northwest in a big way for years now and no one has carried the flag further than world rap champion Illmaculate. He carved out time in his busy schedule between the release of his latest solo effort Skrill Talk and the Sandpeople European tour to pass through the Neighborhood. I got a chance to witness in person a lyrical master at work as he gifted the listeners to a cypher session live in studio. Illmaculate has a grip of great content over at the irapbetter.com including videos and free music.

**Note: Explicit Content**

DJ Roane is a real low key dude. I've known him for a couple of years and didn't even realize he was recording. Reva DeVito has been blessing the northwest with soulful vocals doing guest spots as well as with band as a solo act. They came together in February to release Cloudshine, a project that perfectly blends Roane Namuh's soulful production with Reva's vocal styling. They spent some time in the Neighborhood playing select tracks from the album, talking about the show at Mississippi Studios and the release of the first video from the project for the song Frozen. Check out the full project at roanenamuhrevadevito.bandcamp.com

A member of two northwest super groups both Sandpeople and Oldominion, IAME can't help but be busy. When he's not performing with one of these crews or doing guest verses on projects, he's working on his own material like the latest release, a collaboration with producer and fellow Oldominion member SmokeM2D6 entitled Lame$tream. I was happy to finally get IAME to pass through the Neighborhood following his album release party at Backspace in Portland and just before he left on a west coast tour. We talked up upcoming projects with artists like Goldini Bagwell and the evolution of the Heaven Noise record label. Check out free music from IAME at heavennoise.com

Big up to Keeara of 360degreesunlimited.com for connecting me with Pat of Urban Bridges. The Dream Big talent search is coming up on June 29th and should be a great event, providing some young folk an opportunity to showcase there talents as well as providing an opportunity to build community. More info is available at urbanbridges.org

Matty made his second visit through the Neighborhood as he's finishing up Mr. Nice Guy 2. It's always good to hang with Matty and it was cool to hear the tour went well that he talked about on his last visit through. The website is up with some cool content at thisismatty.com and you know Matty always does it right with the promotions. Check out the video coverage of his visit.

The Neighborhood continues to grow in residents and I'm looking forward hosting some new friends and returning guests over the next several week. Stay tuned to the blog for updates and recaps plus check the links below for the podcast and video links. The name will change, but the content will be the same as three7: becomes DJ Klyph presents: The Movement.

Until next time, be blessed.

Klyph

Welcome to the Neighborhood on iTunes

WTTN with DJ Klyph on Vimeo

CLUBLAND!

ALLO DARLIN', THE WAVE PICTURES, ADVENTURE GALLEY 
(May 10, 2012, Mississippi Studios)

There was a period there, fifteen twenty years ago, when you'd go out to a club to see a favorite band and tacked to the bottom of the bill would be an afterthought, filler. Most often you'd arrive a bit late in order to miss them. Those days seem to be over. Nowadays, arrive late, miss out.

Though indeed local, Adventure Galley are anything but filler. Sporting smart synthy overtones supported by a throbbing catch of New Order-y bass and snappy epileptically precise drumming, they both plunge and soar into their set, christened by generous dollops of glitter applied first thing by the guy behind the Roland, a ritual that would be observed throughout their set (though able to track down names later on their facebook page, those names - David Aaron George Jesse Forrest and Brock - were not attached to instruments). Regardless of the fact that it's the troika of synths up there that catches the eye, this lot is as much a guitar band as Interpol, their sound similarly hynotic though brighter, more openly melodic. Hell, the third song of the set (song titles were unforthcoming), an alternately brooding/popping ramalama, has every member but two - drummer and lone keyboardist - gripping a guitar neck of some kind. Seeing as how song after song carries a brace of well-worn, exceedingly well-done pop tropes - isolated harmony bits, woo-hoo-hoos and the like, not to mention catchy-as-catchy-gets progressions - Adventure Galley rank as a singles band, which is to say a band marvelously out of time. Though lacking quite the zaniness factor (and, frankly, Tim Finn's vocal prowess), one is reminded rather fetchingly of Split Enz. Seemingly effortless pop suss, a brace of 45-ready songs, a streak of irreverence and a crowded stage (six of 'em shoe-horned up there). All's that's missing is the crazed sartorial sense, but what the heck, we'll let the glitter stand in for that.

First thing you notice about The Wave Pictures tonight? They have a lot more room on stage. A 3-piece from Wymeswold, a tiny village smack in the center of England (pop. 1000), they're finally starting to get the attention they've deserved for a while now. Next thing noticed? This is a band for whom lyrics are an integral, finely-honed element. Turns of phrase turn over each other ("Once you wrote your name in peppercorns, poured out on the table"), there's no throwaway here. Helps too that the songs keep pace musically. Dave Tattersall's Gibson playing has this clean swinging authority, the solos rolling off with the clarity of marbles bouncing off the neck with genius precision. Can't overemphasize how nice it is to hear those delicious Gibsonian tones in a straightforward rock context again. Equally refreshing? Seeing the small knot of people whooping it up dancing next to the stage, not so much square-dancing as trapezoid-dancing, which, given the XTCish zest for wordplay yoked to something akin to driving barndance British guitar indie, comes as no surprise. Third song "Seagulls" (off new LP Long Black Cars just released on Moshi Moshi) has a rousing hoedown zing to it that establishes beyond any doubt that the trophy for dextrous playfulness wedded to hopalong songcraft goes to...(envelope please) The Wave Pictures! I'd not seen nor heard them before today (youtube-ing in preparation) but I'll be walking out of here tonight with The Wave Pictures as one of my favorite discoveries of 2012.

Allo Darlin' jump right into with with new song "Barren," as misnamed a song as you'll ever hear, beginning with spirited staccato handclaps and bursting into joy with a shameless abandon, singer Elizabeth Morris chipping away at her baby ukelele like it's a lifeline, and in fact she never lets go of the thing the entire set with the exception of "Capricornia" and "Wonderland." Regardless, we are immediately in boisterously capable hands and it's a pretty safe bet that we'll be smiling a lot tonight. "If Loneliness Were Art," the follow-up (from 2010 self-titled debut), is reggae funk pop (get your head around that for a sec) and we're all in its thrall. Certainly a key to a memorable night at the club is when the band are enjoying themselves as much (or more) than the audience and such is the case tonight. By fourth song "Europe" (title song off latest Slumberland-released LP), I already can't believe how good a time I'm having. Live, the songs off the album come so, well, alive. Allo Darlin' are the kind of spastic wonderful that makes you simply glad to have been born. 

The band's style is such that they occasionally slip into idyl, as in "Let's Go Swimming," a mid-set pacesetter that serves to solidify the band's status as effortless popmeisters a la, say, Orange Juice. Which is a fine moment to pause and address the 'twee' issue. If irresistibly melodic, relentless pop gems like these qualify as twee then Allo Darlin' are twee. But I'd argue there's far too much rhythmic muscularity inside each of these song's structures to merit what is generally considered an unflattering adjective.

"Wonderland" is a perfect example. Beginning all jangly and sweet, it soon enough leaps into a blossomed chug of a groove that puts paid to such critical laziness. And really, if anything should guarantee 'tweeness' it would be a song anchored by the ukelele and Morris's voice alone. But "Tallulah," off Europe, is one of the night's standout offerings, projected with a fierce honesty that you'd question at your own peril. It details that odd kind of happy loneliness when you're away from the place you're comfortable in (both geographic and otherwise) but are nonetheless thrilled to be where you are and boasts the delicious lyric "so I sent you a postcard from Berlin/of a fat man eating a sausage/ hid the fact I was hiding/ as the DJ played another terrible song." Needless to say, it's a literate night.

"Woody Allen," a song request emailed to them that they're only too happy to oblige, is a signature interlude in the set. With its kind of aggressive C-86 beat, its rather plaintive subject matter and its blink-and-you-miss-it length, it's this band to a T, at least til the next song starts. "Still Young" (also off Europe) encapsulates everything in Allo Darlin's insinuous pop-wizardry: sprightly beat, wry lyrics, a jangling and abiding confidence.

Final song "My Heart Is A Drummer" builds into an incessant groove that guarantees a clamor for an encore, which, of course, we get, with the pixie-ish singer again alone with her ukelele, somehow soft and achingly sharp at the same time. It's spellbinding to see the stage commanded so simply via devotion and belief in craft and a voice that's half a child's dreamy soprano, all glassine and innocent, half a wistful, very adult, knowingness. Just before their absolutely final song of the night, we find out it's Ms Morris's birthday and the expected roar goes up but I for one am left feeling a bit awkward. I mean, here it's her birthday and yet Allo Darlin' have been showering us with gifts for well over an hour like it's our birthday. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty apt description of how it felt seeing this band, as I swept out the door and back to my car with just the type of effervescent jubilation I might feel if I'd just been celebrating my birthday. Almost seems as if I should send the band a Thank You card.

CLUBLAND!

Colin Stetson/Sara Neufeld/Gregory Rogove - Mississippi Studios, May 3rd, 2012

Sometimes you find yourself at a show where the roster of artists is barely known to you but, due to what you've heard about them and what you've actually heard - via videos, NPR links, what-have-you - you're fully intrigued by the potential inherent. So it is on a promising spring evening in May I find myself, again, at Mississippi Studios (and how about a quick shout out to the place, a truly neighborhood venue that despite its relatively young age feels as if it's been there for decades). Gregory Rogove is a fully unknown quantity to me, as I would guess he is to many. It is only by the parenthetical association included on the club's handbill - "(Devendra Banhart)" - that I have any context at all. Sarah Neufeld's name, on the other hand, is at least recognizable from Arcade Fire and of course Colin Stetson's work has begun to penetrate the cerebral cortex more steadily over the past year via (invariably glowing) reviews and appearances on facebook threads. Despite my relative ignorance, however, all three, from what I've gleaned pre-show (thank you, youtube) promise a splendid, slightly left field and possibly more classical evening than maybe I'm used to.

With that as pretext, then, it is with some delighted surprise that the visuals accompanying Gregory Rogove's first piece involve monkey sex. Or, more accurately, a primate depiction of the fall of man. Turns out every solo piano piece Rogove plays is backdropped by imagistic videos that were commissioned from various artists ("What does this song look like" was the only instruction) and that run a gamut from allegorical to playful, coy to whimsically disturbing and more besides. The playing itself is stark and declaratively beautiful as only an acoustic piano can be. Neufeld is enlisted as an extra pair of hands for "Conti," a selection that to these ears is driven by the power of loneliness. The next, "Love Cherries," comes back with a kind of demanding hopefulness, what I suppose might more simply be called love. Just impressions, mind, and I could be wildly off, but Rogove's style is explicitly impressionistic, emotional, mysterious, often chilling, a parlor recital mixed with the Whitney Biennial, and it invites such responses. The audio doesn't always sync with the visual yet the effect is no less arresting and possibly more so. Short set, twenty minutes, but the presentation is fresh enough, the music kind of daringly naked enough, it won't be soon forgotten.

If it's just you and a violin up there on stage you best be powerful, compelling, mesmerizing. Sarah Neufeld is, at the very least, these three things. By turns frantic and passionate, gentle and bursting with pathos, she is no less than commanding the entire time. Between pieces, talking, she's sweet and deflective, but with bow in hand she's fiercely present, the playing spellbinding and confident. No doubt these pieces have names attached but never has it mattered less. At time it sounds Cajun, square-dancey and good time, other times contemplative and raw. Mostly, she sounds like a wild child that flew the coop and discovered the fiddle as a means of salvation. Technology fails her at one point - the reverb hasn't kicked in - and she apologizes but we don't care, seeing as what's just gone by was visceral and quite wonderful and pin-drop quiet-making. Few moments later she's playing bass to her own slicing leads and it's as if a hypnotist has stepped on stage but no, wait, the fact is her whole set has been like that and it's been a privilege to hear it, as it's not likely she'll be touring in an intimate solo capacity like this again any time soon.

According to Wikipedia, circular breathing "is used extensively in playing the Australian didgeridoo, the Sardinian launeddas and Egyptian arghul, as well as many traditional oboes and flutes of Asia and the Middle East. A few jazz and classical wind and brass players also utilize some form of circular breathing." A fairly recently developed (20th C.) technique, it allows for almost endlessly sustained playing as the musician breathes in through the nose and always has an extra store of air in the cheeks. It's been used by the likes of Evan Parker, Clark Terry, Roscoe Mitchell, Ian Anderson, Wynton Marsalis and scores of others, a list to which must now be added the name of legend-to-be Colin Stetson.

Bellowing immensely, exquisitely, through a colossal bass saxophone that looks like a relic salvaged from a Welsh colliery band circa 1908, the prowess on display here is simply a deafening wonder. By deafening I don't mean loud per se - though it lacks not for decibels - but deafening in the sense of stopping you in your tracks. It truly is hard to believe so much sound is coming from one person. Sounding at once like a herd of crying pissed-off elephants and the aloneness of a post-bop dude blowing on the Brooklyn Bridge at 4 in the morning, one is simply stupefied by the mastery. Using effects as a rhythm base (often it's his own breath, and/or his own voice murmured from within a complex of sound), he's constantly intense. Opening with a new song called Hurting, which is stunning and no less, then into The Righteous Wrath Of An Honorable Man (off new album "New History Warfare Vol. 2 - Judges" on Constellation), where he repeats similar tricks on a tenor sax, it is ten minutes into his set and his status as a singular phenom is so irrevocably established it's hard to believe he hasn't already been on the cover of Time. The intensity is palpable and there's no turning it down the entire time. How well tuned his own body must be to turn this stuff out night after night is unfathomable. Really, intensity-wise, it's like seeing Battles in the form of a one-man brass band that has just graduated from John Coltrane Summer Camp. This is the kind of music where you marvel at the blood vessels not burst.

Watching him can be, umm, breathtaking, though not just because of the physicality alone but the expressiveness as well. A Dream Of Water is a perfect example, based on the (true) story of a whale forever lost to its pod, and I dare you to hear those unearthly, submarine cries of floating despair and tell me your heartstrings aren't plucked. Such a powerful 'lostness' in there you may not recover. Remarkable.

Not long after that an almost-tuba sound comes 'round the corner - not surprisingly originating from that enormous bass sax - and on it builds a slow, low keen of a groove like a wolf playing back its howl with the tape slowed down. It is sad, is it forlorn, but then it begins to gallop and you think 'Ahh, the genius of Colin Stetson, that animal's gonna run free after all.' Again, one man's interpretation, of course, but you get the idea of the utter gripping primal nature on offer here. Like nothing you've ever heard, it's crazy abandon under the strictest control. And the amazing thing is, it's not so much the virtuosity - though of course there's plenty of that - as it is tone and shading, the place where the emotions are, and there are a lot of them. Forceful, angry, regretful, melancholic, hopeful, dreaming and redemptive, it's all there. Melody may come second but boy does it come, lifting itself out of the middle of cacophonous strands like a moaning wind. The evening's last piece, "A Part Of Me Apart From You" is almost lullaby-like like in its waves of yearning, and is an ideal note to bring an extraordinarily artful night to a close. It's nights like this you're thrilled to be alive, lucky to have ears and the human capacity to interpret sound. I found it difficult to get to sleep once I got home and when it comes down to it, that's what you want, isn't it? You can't really ask much more from a night of live music than that, so thank you, Colin (and Sarah, and Gregory).