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April 16, 2008
Deerhunter, live @ Market Hotel, Bushwick 04.11.08
photos by Devon Banks
Last Saturday, Deerhunter played a hastily announced but hardly secret show at Bushwick, Brooklyn's loft venue the Market Hotel. The occasion was a more newsworthy than usual first public airing of the songs that will make up the band's third record Microcastle, which has no release date as of yet but is expected later this year.
I gave a full accounting of my problems with the space and how the shows there are run a few months ago, and nothing about Friday night really changed my opinion in either direction. You can direct your attention to the predictable dust up in this Brooklyn Vegan comments thread. Why refight the same comments battle here by rehashing? On with the show...
Knyfe Hyts
I wanted to be on Knyfe Hyts' side, I really did. When the band began their set it was actually rife with promise. There was an enchantingly evil kraut bass groove, sharp guitar stabs, and a drama-masked theatricality that I was willing to embrace. But as the set wore on, the sound never progressed. The individual songs kept bloating to longer and longer lengths, and the spastic vocal stylings of the George "the Animal" Steele-level hairy singer weren't helping. But I never really despised the band until their final song, when they invited a beefy bald man known as "MC Tracheotomy" from the audience to join them.
At first the bloke just sat around in the background as another extended jam unfolded, occasionally clapping and continually resembling Herc from the Wire. When silent, his presence made me like Knyfe Hyts more. "Ah, they are doing a riff on the Happy Mondays/Bez and making it funnier by elaborately calling him up from the crowd," we naively thought. If only. What he did actually do was unleash a torrent of despicably enunciated freestyle rap that veered perilously close to similar abominations by world class MCs like Anthony Kiedis or Barney in that one Fruity Pebbles commercial. At which point any lingering good will I might have had was lead quietly behind a nearby shed and shot twice behind the ear with a service revolver.
AIDS Wolf
Listen, I'm not so dumb. I know that a band that calls themselves "AIDS Wolf" has different goals in mind then cracking the pop charts or soundtracking a Starbucks. I was expected abrasion (well actually I was expecting to miss them entirely as they were billed second on the poster, but...). AIDS Wolf's set was like being punched in the ear repeatedly for a good 25 minutes. There just wasn't enough nuance or apparent construction involved in the band's indistinguishable songs to make their time on stage anything more than an endurance contest. While waiting for it to end, I was imagining what their practice sessions must be like: "OK, guitarist, you just start fucking shredding. Drummer, pound the living shit out of that drum set. I'm gonna start screaming, and we'll all just kind of peter out in four minutes. Go!"
It's music for masochists and I sincerely didn't "get" it.
Deerhunter
When Deerhunter began setting up around 2 A.M. it was a profound relief. Many of less dedicated stock had already fled for the exits, with a late running time and grueling opening acts peeling a guesstimated 150 people from the back of the room. Which, in light of a heavily publicized performance of completely unheard new material from one of the underground's most acclaimed and debated bands, is more telling than any snark I could offer. As the unmistakable bass notes of their fellow Georgians' dance hit began to roll over us, the long national nightmare had finally come to a close.
Their version of "Cool" was entirely spot-on--concerned primarily primarily with nailing the original and not adding a new twist-- and entirely not why we were there. "So now Microcastle," began Bradford Cox. It's hard to get deep into specifics about songs heard once and then stored in a rapidly dissipating memory bank so forgive the generalities. The songs were shorter and more immediate than the band's previous material. it seems some of the sixties pop romanticism that informs the Atlas Sound material has seeped into Deerhunter as well. Previously known songs like "Calvary Scars" and "Activa" were present, but possible less drawn out than their sketches have been.
The performace was notably lacking any sort of vocal pedals to warp and manipulate Cox's voice; a factor that probably accounts for some of the lingering notion of increased accessibility. The ambient experimentation of Cryptograms seemed mainly chucked as well. Thankfully the occasional tidal wave of shoegazer guitar was not. Guitarist Lockett Pundt took the mic for one of the songs, ably showcasing a voice he's used in material posted on the band's continually seminal blog. "It'll sound alot better than this," promised Cox late in the dozen or so song set. Given the consistent quality of these under practiced songs in less than pristine conditions, that's a pretty tantalizing prospect.
Posted by Jeff Klingman at April 16, 2008 01:05 PM
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Comments
oh, what i would have given to be at that show. it [well, not the openers] sounded like a complete blast.
Posted by: douglas martin at April 20, 2008 06:28 AM
