This was supposed to be a busy-ass weekend for me. Math the Band and Team Robespierre at Death by Audio, Hot Lava at Cake shop, then the Pool Parties, but an unpleasant financial surprise on Saturday morning really wiped out the motivation for going out and doing much of anything. It’s easy to mourn missed shows, but it’s far easier to not even worry about them having seen a show that kicked your ass up and down the street.
I love Math The Band live. I feel that the qualifier is very important to mention, because their albums are really a bit too twee for me, a mixed down guitar and Kevin affected a cloying whine which really makes it difficult to listen to their earlier music for more than a few songs. Banned the Math, their first album, is fun and high energy but practically unbearable to me. Tour De Friends tones it down a bit, and their newest one, Don’t Worry is nearly power pop perfection, but there is still a trace of the nasal shifting pitch warble.
Live it’s nearly a different story because the guitar and the keyboards are pushing out against the vocals and their energy moves through the crowd and you find yourself dancing and shouting “EVERYBODY HAVE FUN TONIGHT” seconds into their first song and then there’s really no way you can maintain a pretense of detached cool when you’re flinging your limbs at your neighbors and they are doing the same to you as Kevin and Justine are launching themselves up and down pulling faces as though they slammed espresso made with Mexican jumping beans seconds before coming on stage.
So there was a degree of anticipation before Friday’s show. Also on the line up were Watercolor Paintings, iji Uncle Monsterface and Team Robespierre, who I missed at their recent Pier 54 performance due to work. Watercolor Paintings I had never heard of before. I was only familiar with iji through an 8 Bit cover song off of Tour De Friends, so I wasn’t really certain what to expect. Uncle Monsterface I had never heard of either. All of which is totally fine. I love discovering new music, so I always try to make it out to shows to catch everyone. Sometimes you see god-awful self samey “me too” pap that makes you wish that Brooklyn would burn to the ground and take all the generic filth with it, and sometimes you see a Germs cover band lead by a shirtless screaming Asian dude with accountant glasses going for the moon at ramming speed out of first gear, into second gear then to Darby Crash (it was either this or some kind of Roller Darby pun, I went with the less of two evils). And that shit is so special you wrap it up in your memory to look at later when you’re sober to make certain that it actually happened and then you’re like “Holy shit.”
Before heading over we stopped by for impromptu whiskey shots at Subway bar, a small place right over the L/G Lorimer station, thanks to a sign promoting $5 BPR and Evan Williams shots. Small place. Inexpensive. It’s a dive. There’s not really much you can say about it other than there are places to sit and drink on the cheap.
It had been a few months since our last trip to Death By Audio and in that time period Triffids appear to have taken over the sidewalk. Huge stalks of leafy plants actually hid the people smoking from the street giving DBA probably the best thing a DIY venue can have; a bit of privacy.
We got made it in time to catch about half of the set of Watercolor paintings, which is Rebecca and Joshua Redman (a brother and sister team), who sing these fragile songs about seemingly inconsequential things, which really hide a kind of Kitchen Sink matter-of-factness behind them. I would compare them favorably to Brooklyn band Air Waves. They had the audience sitting on the floor and they filled the room with Rebecca’s careful guitar work and voice while Joshua sang more to her than to the audience for the parts where his voice was called upon to add a lower register.
The audience was silent throughout the entire performance as people walking in were respectful and even the people in the back area were quiet. I wish I could have gotten some of their music, but with rent due, finances are kind of tight. The music you can find on their Myspace page is representative enough. Highly recommended.
iji was up next. I knew nothing about them other than they were from Seattle, which I’ll admit, threw up a whole bunch of preconceptions about their sound, but they were all quickly whittled away when Zach Burba started into the first song. The band consisted of a keyboardist, a guitarist, drummer, bassist and a multi-instrumentalist Jon who added percussion, toy keyboard, a melodica, maracas and an omnicord. This is probably the first time I’ve seen a melodica in use in a band but it added a great tone to the project when it was used, providing a degree of melody that was part harmonica and part recorder, used in a number of songs but sparingly.
Zach’s voice on recordings has a tendency to dissolve into the over-modulated singer songwriter warble when he his songs call for him to sing loudly. I don’t know who to blame for this musical style, but I’ve heard it enough that I want to punch the originator in the nose. Live there wasn’t much of that. His tone was clear and his inflection well placed. I think that as he goes on, he’ll develop his sound to match what he’s doing with music and I think they will compliment each other quite well. Not the next album, but possibly the one after that.
He and the rest of the band were having a lot of fun and the audience was quite appreciative though at first there was more watching than dancing, even on the up tempo songs. Though a few songs into the set, everyone found their groove, and Jon passed maracas to the audience.
Very good set with a set list which worked quite well live. The band’s interaction with the audience and itself was nearly perfect, but you could see that this was largely Zach’s show and he presented his compositions with aplomb and I look forward to what he does in the future.
If you would like to hear his music, he’s placed a great deal of it for free on the Internet Archive and it’s worth your time.
Uncle Monsterface set up the stage with a makeshift puppet theater constructed out of PVC pipe, Bedsheets, instruments, a rear screen projector, a few decades worth of nerd knowledge, and a healthy amount of What the Fuck.
When the singer came on stage, Eatsdirt leaned over to me and said “I think that guy sells finger puppets in Union Square” when we were lead down the nightmare of pixie stix red bull psychedelica Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning overdose cult of Uncle Monsterface, I would not be shocked at all.
The set opens with The Sound Check Song, which leads to a video introduction to Monsterface Industries, a company devoted to… something. Something involving monsters and faces when suddenly there is a horrible error in the computer, a kitten’s head explodes, sirens sound, and our safety is not longer guaranteed, regardless if we kept our hands and feet inside the safety of our clothes.
It’s difficult to describe a band so easily categorized as Novelty when there is such an amount of work placed into the stage presence and theatrical aspects as there is into the songs. If their tastes ran to the dark and seriuz, they could carve a career out of playing shows in the Midwest on the Juggalo circuit, but since their tastes were decidedly brighter, it’s difficult to see it beyond anything like one off shows here and there, which is really unfortunate, but when was the last time you heard anyone say “Man, I wish Green Jello were coming to town soon”?
Focusing on just the theatrical aspects, we got to see a man in a Mashed Potato costume fight a man dressed as a Vampire, we saw the lead singer throw inflatable toys including but not limited to a four foot long dragon, a four foot high tyrannosaurus rex, an axe and an airplane. We saw a man dressed as…. something come from backstage and shout at the audience. We saw a woman forced to play Super Mario World (SNES All Star edition) and beat a level in under a minute and thirty seconds (she did). We saw the guitarist take a T-Rex to the face. We sang a song devoted to Gary Gygax (though someone shouted “GURPS, BITCH” in protest), we saw a compilation of our heroes and we saw a crowd go absolutely mental for what could only really be described as “Saturday Morning Punk,” the music of youth and nostalgia played really, really fast. Grand Scoobynol.
The music was good. Catchy as you’d expect. Complimenting the stage show, but so intertwined it would be difficult to separate it and judge it on its own. Go see them if you can. It will be well worth your time.
Math the Band was up next and they played with Zach of iji on the drums and spot vocals. This really rounded out the sound and it makes me wish that they didn’t live on opposite coasts from one another as it was an excellent addition.
From the first song, Hang Out/ Hang Ten, the crowd performed admirably and aside from a few pockets of resistance, everyone danced and swayed and sweat together like a new animal; Mathus Bandus Audienus. In its natural and singular habitat throwing hands in the hair, clapping, yelling, smiling and wringing as much fun as possible from their bodies, well primed from Uncle Monsterface.
Kevin and Justine were their usual high-energy selves feeding back on the crowd’s enthusiasm to propel themselves further and faster until the end of the set they are both jumping up and down on the stage while continuing to play, screaming replacing singing and Zach’s drumming faster and harder.
By the end of their set, you’re exhausted and covered in sweat, they’re exhausted and covered in sweat, and you still have one more band to go.
Team Robespierre set up on the floor, as is their custom and quickly threw their sound out of the speakers at full speed into the audience. Punk and electronic elements combine in an assimilation of every fast simple genre from the past few decades. Don’t discount simple for stupid. It’s simple so nothing gets in the way between the audience and their locked down desire to go absolutely mental for the next thirty minutes. The singer is crawling on the drum kit, the audience, the floor, and if he could, the ceiling. He’s shouting into microphones and faces with equal time and zeal.
Amazingly, some in the audience still have energy and people who are looking for a lower key setting either flee to the merch area or go home, which is fine, because it gives everyone else space, not that it’s used for much more than brief respites between songs or choruses where everyone knows the words and every shouts them right back.
But once more, it was an excellent show in a string of excellent shows from them.
And then Eatsdirt and I had sandwiches from Sunac. They were delicious, except for the paper.