Saturday night’s Pregnant record release party is the best show I’ve been to since I moved to New York in 2008. Period.
Its intimacy, energy and vibe reminded me of the best house shows of my youth while the technical excellence of the bands remind even the most jaded of attendees can still be drawn into the thrashing twister of a perfectly punk storm.
I’m so very happy I made it out because Pregnant achieved and solidified the primal thoughts in my head that I had after catching them at Death By Audio (a.k.a. DBA) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn just a few weeks ago. Pregnant is making rock music, sans genre qualifiers. It sounds a little bit like Garage, it sounds a little bit like Surf, it sounds a little bit like Punk, it sounds a little bit like the barely controlled energy of those who have given over to wild abandon.
If I’m being hyperbolic, you’ll have to excuse me, as the band inspires that kind of thought, that desperate NEED to tell others about the music. About how “You Thinks” country fried rhythms are about bad ideas, like eating truck stop egg salad sandwiches about how “Safe & Sound” carries the overtures of the safe drone of an oscillating fan even as the song itself spirals out of control.
You can’t read about it. This isn’t even a shadow of the echoes of the primacy that Pregnant carries with them in a live performance.
It was my first time to 538 Johnson. The lofts were tucked away in one of Brooklyn’s many industrial sections, which was a short walk from the L train. We found the building only because Night Birds were hanging around out front. We had never been here before, so we didn’t know what kind of schedule to plan for; suggestion for attendees, feel free to be late and make certain to BYOB as their closest bodega is about a 10 minute walk away from the venue.
The stairwell and hallways are treated as a giant canvas and in addition to the creatively daring penises and boobs, you can find some good tags and pieces littered about, but the apartment we went to was clean and huge. It was one of those lofts tucked away form everything that instills the immediate mental calculator where you try to figure out what it would cost you to live there against what you’d be willing to give up from your current place.
Cool Intentions was the first band, and the fact that they’re just a few months old shows a bit. Their first performance was back in May and they were a bit shaky. The lead singer / bassist had that out of key semi-spoken monotone drone that would slip out of key. I’m not able to find them online so I can’t get a sense of what they were trying to do versus what came out. The dual guitarists didn’t seem to give into the traditional lead / rhythm style as both kind of took the percussive elements of traditional rhythm to the fore front so that the whole band seemed to act as a giant five-piece rhythm section. If you guys read this, get in contact with me. I’m curious if you have anything recorded.
Night Birds were on second and they dumped gasoline all over everyone in the loft and set us on fire using the friction of the guitar’s lead lines as guitarist Mike, flung himself into the audience less like he was playing his instrument and more like he was trying to prevent it from killing everyone in the audience, giving up pieces of himself to prevent that from happening. I had never really paid attention to the bass work before Saturday, always giving my attention to the vibrato that tickles my palate and puts a huge smile on my face each time it hits, but Joey is legitimately incredible. Putting as much power and speed into his work as any lead musician, not content to just count time while some other jags steal the glory. Joey plays guitar like a teenager who has just discovered masturbation; a fury and inventive intensity that leaves others scratching their heads wondering what just happened. They played the new material again, and I asked when the next single would be out and was told “in a few months” and I believe the label mentioned was “In The Red” but I could be remembering that wrong. I should have written it down or not drunk so much.
UPDATE: I have been informed the next release will be in October on No Way Records.
The Men were set up for a five piece and they opened with what sounded like a modified version of “Stranger Song” off Immaculada. My unabashed enthusiasm for this band is well documented and probably embarrassing to my friends at this point. “Have you listened to this band? Here’s their entire discography. Start with Immaculada and work your way to everything else. Yes, the first half of Immaculada is uneasy listening, but it is VITAL that you sit through it each time so that the revisited themes come back with the intensity of – DON’T WALK AWAY” and so on and so forth.
This is only the second time I’ve managed to catch them and it was a different set list, different set up and already experimenting with additional members and adding synthwork into the live set up. There’s the slight danger that they could vanish down the rabbit hole, but so far The Men has given no indication of losing sight of the cohesion that makes their work so exciting.
The madness and anarchy of the crowd for The Men was absolutely unclassed by the frenzy into which Pregnant managed to whip the crowd. Seconds after the first song launched, I lost my glasses. If it were for the quick thinking of behalf of a friend, this would have been “that goddamn show that cost me five hundred bucks” as opposed to The Pregnant Record Release Party.
I had intended to become more familiar with Pregnant’s music by the time the show rolled around, but beyond listening to the album a few times on their website, I failed to have more than a cursory knowledge of the new music, but just like the show at DBA a few weeks ago, that was entirely unnecessary. That familiarity along with the warmth of Kevin Manion’s personality came through his guitar playing as the songs enveloped you, to be pushed away or pulled closer with a seductive tone and timbre.
At many times, Pregnant would stop to catch their collective breath or wipe sweat from their faces and as they looked out a loft full of well wishers, they looked like they felt to be the luckiest band in the world. As we slammed into each other at their behest, less at their command but more in our Dervish-like devotion. Their enthusiasm feeding our activity to give us energy while they took time between faster songs to play slower, or at least less intense songs, so that not all of our time was spent trying to fling ourselves at the other side of the room.
This was not the Pregnant of DBA. This was like the Ur-Pregnant. The self-realized ideal of what the band was trying to achieve. Sweat, spilled beer, bruises bodies and dirtied shoes and misplaced evenings.
See Pregnant live. Buy their record. Proselytize. Tell everyone. Pregnant is here and the adoration is well placed.