Noise Pop 2008 :: A Place To Bury Strangers, White Denim, Holy Fuck
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Artist:
A Place To Bury Strangers, White Denim, Holy Fuck, Veil Veil Vanish
(Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco CA, 02/29/2008)
On my way to the Bottom Of The Hill, I stop by at the Parkside for a Noise Pop happy hour show. I knew I was sadly going to miss Portland's High Violets (sometimes the vegetarian super burrito at El Farolito takes precedence), but I arrive in time to enjoy a leisurely beer with the carefree and eclectic post-punk freak-pop of The Don'ts (made up of Jonny Don't sing, Joey Don't guitar, JJ Don't bass, and Kenny Don't drum...). Arriving at the sold-out Bottom Of The Hill with about 100 hopefuls queuing up for a ticket already at 8:30pm, I'm reminded what a lovely, intimate venue it is.
Veil Veil Vanish from San Francisco open up with a half-hour set of reverential 80s-style gloomy post-punk/shoegaze/gothic psychedelia. But the bands they revere (The Chameleons, The Sound, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure) are so great that even a good copycat with urgent guitars and seductive choruses is just fine by me. I should have bought their EP Into A New Mausoleum.
White Denim from Austin deliver the surprise of the night, beginning with the text on the bassist's T-shirt: "Serious X-Men Reader" (!) The trio clearly have great fun on stage, and the variety of dimensions in their music impresses me deeply. As some of you know, I'm not easily impressed. The set begins with "Migration Wind" which starts off with the guitarist/singer James Petralli laying down multiple guitar loops for a couple of minutes before the band explodes into a pummeling beat (watch video from another performance). So we have dynamic kind of post-punk with instrument-geek experimentalism. Nice! But as the set rolls on, it would be equally accurate to say that we have Grand Funk Railroad power trio done in Fugazi style. Or that we have Nuggets-style garage overdrive with dissonantly tuneful melodies. Click the red button for the title song from their "Let's Talk About It" vinyl EP, which is their only official "hard copy" release. I hope they get on to a record label soon. On the basis of a brief merch table chat, they also seemed like nice, good, humble people. If anything, they seem surprised when they receive a passionate response and raucous applause from audience. So the bottom line is that I thought White Denim were wonderful.
A Place To Bury Strangers once again don't disappoint. While I don't really have anything substantive to add to my previous concert and album reviews, I could wax ecstatic about the heavy fragility they achieve on "The Falling Sun," or how the ticking beat on "To Fix The Gash In Your Head" makes my foot tap faster than I can manage, or myriad other things. But I'll just say that it's another top-notch set that's pioneering in its musical use of noise and hypnotic in the way that also Amber and Mike, among others, have documented. The more intimate venue than where I last saw them (The Mezzanine) works in their favor, even as it provides no opportunity for their customary film projections. The searing and intense sound works for me like a power wire straight into my mainline. The one downside is that the set fails to reach its usual climax in transition from "I've Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart" to "Ocean" because Jono's bass amp fails. That instrumental interlude is now spent on getting an extra guitar amp do the duty for him and the set's dynamic culmination comes more traditionally only at the very end. It pleases me to see a band who don't care one whit about courting audience response during the set. It pleases me that I sneak a quick word to Jono that there's a group of people here on MOG who truly appreciate what APTBS are doing musically. It also pleases me that I manage to grab the last medium-sized copy of this shredding T-shirt in gray:
Holy Fuck, the headliners from Toronto, seem like a bunch of nice Canadian boys. They're an instrumental, improvisational electro-indie group that are fun and energetic enough to keep the party mood going. But musically . . . boring as fuck. (If someone can explain to me why they merit the superlatives I keep seeing about them, I'd be grateful.)
I know that the fellow Mogger indiepixie (aka Faith) is in town to shoot Noise Pop shows and is supposed to be at this show. After the bands are done, I manage to guess correctly who she is from those who are sporting pro-level photography equipment. It's getting late, so we only have a 15-20 minute chat, but it's an interesting and pleasant one, and I'm happy to have met yet another Mogger in real life who turns out to be a smart and nice person. I took some crappy APTBS pictures myself from my third-row location, but I'm hoping Faith will supply us with something better!
(Bottom Of The Hill, San Francisco CA, 02/29/2008)
On my way to the Bottom Of The Hill, I stop by at the Parkside for a Noise Pop happy hour show. I knew I was sadly going to miss Portland's High Violets (sometimes the vegetarian super burrito at El Farolito takes precedence), but I arrive in time to enjoy a leisurely beer with the carefree and eclectic post-punk freak-pop of The Don'ts (made up of Jonny Don't sing, Joey Don't guitar, JJ Don't bass, and Kenny Don't drum...). Arriving at the sold-out Bottom Of The Hill with about 100 hopefuls queuing up for a ticket already at 8:30pm, I'm reminded what a lovely, intimate venue it is.
Veil Veil Vanish from San Francisco open up with a half-hour set of reverential 80s-style gloomy post-punk/shoegaze/gothic psychedelia. But the bands they revere (The Chameleons, The Sound, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Cure) are so great that even a good copycat with urgent guitars and seductive choruses is just fine by me. I should have bought their EP Into A New Mausoleum.
White Denim from Austin deliver the surprise of the night, beginning with the text on the bassist's T-shirt: "Serious X-Men Reader" (!) The trio clearly have great fun on stage, and the variety of dimensions in their music impresses me deeply. As some of you know, I'm not easily impressed. The set begins with "Migration Wind" which starts off with the guitarist/singer James Petralli laying down multiple guitar loops for a couple of minutes before the band explodes into a pummeling beat (watch video from another performance). So we have dynamic kind of post-punk with instrument-geek experimentalism. Nice! But as the set rolls on, it would be equally accurate to say that we have Grand Funk Railroad power trio done in Fugazi style. Or that we have Nuggets-style garage overdrive with dissonantly tuneful melodies. Click the red button for the title song from their "Let's Talk About It" vinyl EP, which is their only official "hard copy" release. I hope they get on to a record label soon. On the basis of a brief merch table chat, they also seemed like nice, good, humble people. If anything, they seem surprised when they receive a passionate response and raucous applause from audience. So the bottom line is that I thought White Denim were wonderful.
A Place To Bury Strangers once again don't disappoint. While I don't really have anything substantive to add to my previous concert and album reviews, I could wax ecstatic about the heavy fragility they achieve on "The Falling Sun," or how the ticking beat on "To Fix The Gash In Your Head" makes my foot tap faster than I can manage, or myriad other things. But I'll just say that it's another top-notch set that's pioneering in its musical use of noise and hypnotic in the way that also Amber and Mike, among others, have documented. The more intimate venue than where I last saw them (The Mezzanine) works in their favor, even as it provides no opportunity for their customary film projections. The searing and intense sound works for me like a power wire straight into my mainline. The one downside is that the set fails to reach its usual climax in transition from "I've Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow Of Your Heart" to "Ocean" because Jono's bass amp fails. That instrumental interlude is now spent on getting an extra guitar amp do the duty for him and the set's dynamic culmination comes more traditionally only at the very end. It pleases me to see a band who don't care one whit about courting audience response during the set. It pleases me that I sneak a quick word to Jono that there's a group of people here on MOG who truly appreciate what APTBS are doing musically. It also pleases me that I manage to grab the last medium-sized copy of this shredding T-shirt in gray:
Holy Fuck, the headliners from Toronto, seem like a bunch of nice Canadian boys. They're an instrumental, improvisational electro-indie group that are fun and energetic enough to keep the party mood going. But musically . . . boring as fuck. (If someone can explain to me why they merit the superlatives I keep seeing about them, I'd be grateful.)
I know that the fellow Mogger indiepixie (aka Faith) is in town to shoot Noise Pop shows and is supposed to be at this show. After the bands are done, I manage to guess correctly who she is from those who are sporting pro-level photography equipment. It's getting late, so we only have a 15-20 minute chat, but it's an interesting and pleasant one, and I'm happy to have met yet another Mogger in real life who turns out to be a smart and nice person. I took some crappy APTBS pictures myself from my third-row location, but I'm hoping Faith will supply us with something better!
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Comments (11)
NoisePop 2010 - They have another terrific line-up this year. Here is a playlist I created of some of my favoriate bands playing at this years NoisePop festival.
http://mog.com/playlists/107013