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May 23, 2006

Sunset Rubdown/ Frog Eyes / Beirut @ the Mercury Lounge, New York City, 5.22.06

Photos by Devon Banks

There's likely going to be a digital quart of virtual ink spilled on Monday night's exemplary Mercury Lounge bill, so I'll spare you the flowery intro. It was very good. Terrific even. Fucking awesome, perchance. Band by band, here we go...

Beirut

The grade handed down to teenage buzzwolf Zach Condon by the blogosphere's self professed professors following his first ever show earlier this month as gypsy pop outfit Beirut was a noncommital incomplete. Great pains were taken not to smother the new band in its hype crib, attaching back handed complements like "full of promise" to a performance marred by long between song technical difficulties and an understandably nervous demeanor. Expect the reception to be a bit more rapturous for the impressively smooth follow-up. Beirut's strength was in the freshness of its nonconventional line-up (Mini string section, t-shirt muffled snare drums, mandolin, multiple instances of dueling ukelele) and in the disconnect between Zach's baby face and old soul croon. Album standouts "Postcards From Italy" and "Mt. Worclai" were set highpoints as well, standing out above looser non album material that curiously dominated the short set. Some momentum was lost when Zach had to split his attention from lead vocal to trumpet duty, a problem sure to be rectified by the announced addition of a small brass section for upcoming shows. The gathering strength of his touring ensemble bodes well for live renditions of more of Gulag Orkestar's material, and also the amount of tail this kid is in for. Girls are already starting to wig out a little. Good luck, Zach.

Sunset Rubdown

You get the feeling that Spencer Krug has little use for name distinctions seperating one of his bands from the others. Songs are frequently reworked, expanded, defanged, or amped up across the Rubdown-Wolf Parade border with a refreshing lack of regulation. In that vein, Spence started Sunset Rubdown's set with a beautifully vulnerable solo piano rendition of band shared track "I'll Believe in Anything." Lines that come across as end of your rope defiance when framed by electric guitar took on the air of quiet pleading collapse when painted with a softer brush. So fragile that the segway into glam stomper "Snake's Got a Leg III" was all the more shocking when the full band finally exploded into form. Playing there together, the band had a weight that surpassed lofty expectations. The songs on their excellent album, Shut Up, I am Dreaming are thrilling and, well, dreamy, but not this ferocious by half. Even pristine ballad "Us Ones in Between" gained a swagger via pounding drum work. Some of the beauty was lost, maybe, but it was still awful pretty and the recorded version doesn't hit you in the chest like it did on Monday.

Nearly all of their debut album was accounted for, and a good many of the songs were equalled if not improved by a live reading. Whereas my experience with a drunken Wolf Parade last year was that of mild disappointment that they couldn't seem to handle the complexity of some of their own songs, and ended up rushing through, Sunset Rubdown tackled multi part opuses like "I'm Sorry I Sang on Your Hands That Have Been in the Grave" with assured prowess, Spencer rocking his keyboard with as much fury as a seated man can muster. Talent like his is hard to miss no matter what name he's operating under, and I (and the rest of the floored audience, I can only assume) will make it a point to investigate any project he sees fit to release for the forseeable future. Can we start getting insanely excited for Swan Lake yet?

Frog Eyes

Frog Eyes took the stage post Rubdown, and commmenced freaking out for the entirety of their set. It was as if Jack Black's High Fidelity clerk didn't wuss out in the end and had brought a Sonic Death Monkey concert off to completion. As predicted, Laura's bourgeois lawyer friends couldn't handle it, and the audience shrunk to roughly a third of its former size. Frog Eyes' live show reverses the normal structure of things, laying out a full throttle perpetual climax and only occasionally seguing into a calm transitional moment. No one can accuse Carey Mercer of taking it easy, or lacking passion, but his message is a bit muddled when every song is a ten car pile up. On record, access points into the dirge storm can be found in inventively far out lyrics, and subtle keyboard counter melodies, but subtleties were lost in the electric shock delivery. Despite the addition of Krug's tired hands on the Yamaha, the synth accompaniment here was a tad drowned out. When he finally took a breath and slowed the pace on a new song towards the end of the set, it displayed how expressive and beautifully weird the sound of Mercer's voice can be when given a little space to make it's impact. That space was hard to come by in this remarkably committed, but ultimately punishing performance.

More Sun Rub and Frog Eyes pictures after the jump...

Tags: Frog Eyes, Sunset Rubdown, Beirut, Mercury Lounge

Posted by Jeff Klingman at May 23, 2006 06:39 PM

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