Noise Pop 2008 :: The Gutter Twins
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Artist:
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Track:Down The Line
The Gutter Twins, Great Northern, Monotonix, Apache
(Bimbo's 365 Club, San Francisco CA, 03/01/2008)
After a day spent record shopping at Amoeba and strolling around, my second night at Noise Pop takes me to the sold-out Bimbo's with its plush red velvet furniture and uniformed wait staff. Upon arriving I get a beer and park myself close to the stage just as the show's about to start.
Apache from San Francisco kick things off with New York Dolls/Sweet style '70 proto-punk that's all fleshy guitar riffs, stomping drums, and glammy vocals from a swaggering singer. It's still early and the crowd's thin on the ground, as most people are sitting at tables towards the back of the venue, but the band deal well enough with some nervous joking. Some songs are quite good and I liked Apache fine.
Monotonix from Tel Aviv, Israel, are the most audience-engaging performers I've seen in a good while. That's because they set up their gear not on the stage but on the floor and play in (that is, amidst) the audience, occasionally doling out parts of the already minimal drum kit for people to play or at least having someone sit on the bass drum to keep it from moving. The guitarist slinks among the audience, the hirsute singer runs around, jumping up and on patrons and rolling on the ground with glee. So they're also the craziest performers I've seen in a good while, even as the singer doesn't duct-tape himself to anyone and they don't set the drum kit on fire (both can be witnessed on YouTube). I didn't even mention yet that the singer looks like Yanni and the drummer like Borat. The music is unsurprisingly sloppy but quite adequate to its purpose: slightly progressive heavy-riffing blues-garage in the Black Keys vein with clear Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy influences. ("Body Language" on Myspace is actually quite good.) The emphasis with Monotonix is on show.
Great Northern from LA are previously unknown to me. They sport fairly clean keyboard-aided cinematic textures not unlike those of The Delgados. But the vocalist doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Emma Pollock. In some cases, song structures could benefit from greater maturation. But all in all not bad.
The Gutter Twins are hot off the gate with "The Stations" (I think) and from there on out it's one fleshy, grimy, smoldering tune after another. The pair (whom Dulli has dubbed "the Satanic Everly Brothers") have already played a handful of shows with their four-man touring band to preview Saturnalia (release March 4). I hesitate to say too much about individual songs because I don't really know the album yet. (In addition to most of the Saturnalia tracks, we get Massive Attack's "Live With Me" that Twilight Singers feat. Lanegan covered on Stitch In Time EP and, I think, a cover of Jose Gonzalez's "Down the Line"?) What I can say is that although not all songs come off great, mostly they sound majestic, and that overall the material compares favorably with anything (including the strong 2006 record Powder Burns) that Dulli has done with Twilight Singers, even if it doesn't reach the heights of the best Afghan Whigs stuff or Lanegan's solo work. On stage, Dulli is, expectedly, the more energetic of the two, rocking out around the immobile Lanegan who maintains his slight forward lean, with one hand on the mic and the other on the stand, for the entire 75-or-so-minute set to give an unadorned delivery of one of the best rock voices of our generation.
At one point only, the facade cracks: as Lanegan's solo track "No Easy Action" (one of the five encores, all culled from Lanegan's solo work or Twilight Singers) receives an enthusiastic reception, Dulli laughs and whispers something to Lanegan's ear, giving us the spectacle of seeing Lanegan smile for more than a few seconds. Lanegan also seems to be clean: unlike some other times I've seen him, he's got some flesh on his bones and isn't pale as a ghost. I hope The Gutter Twins ends up being a fruitful collaboration for Lanegan, my favorite artist of the two. His and Dulli's different strengths have at least a chance of complementing each other nicely and their stage chemistry seems to work OK. This performance, at any rate, was deeply convincing and impressive.
(Bimbo's 365 Club, San Francisco CA, 03/01/2008)
After a day spent record shopping at Amoeba and strolling around, my second night at Noise Pop takes me to the sold-out Bimbo's with its plush red velvet furniture and uniformed wait staff. Upon arriving I get a beer and park myself close to the stage just as the show's about to start.
Apache from San Francisco kick things off with New York Dolls/Sweet style '70 proto-punk that's all fleshy guitar riffs, stomping drums, and glammy vocals from a swaggering singer. It's still early and the crowd's thin on the ground, as most people are sitting at tables towards the back of the venue, but the band deal well enough with some nervous joking. Some songs are quite good and I liked Apache fine.
Monotonix from Tel Aviv, Israel, are the most audience-engaging performers I've seen in a good while. That's because they set up their gear not on the stage but on the floor and play in (that is, amidst) the audience, occasionally doling out parts of the already minimal drum kit for people to play or at least having someone sit on the bass drum to keep it from moving. The guitarist slinks among the audience, the hirsute singer runs around, jumping up and on patrons and rolling on the ground with glee. So they're also the craziest performers I've seen in a good while, even as the singer doesn't duct-tape himself to anyone and they don't set the drum kit on fire (both can be witnessed on YouTube). I didn't even mention yet that the singer looks like Yanni and the drummer like Borat. The music is unsurprisingly sloppy but quite adequate to its purpose: slightly progressive heavy-riffing blues-garage in the Black Keys vein with clear Led Zeppelin and Thin Lizzy influences. ("Body Language" on Myspace is actually quite good.) The emphasis with Monotonix is on show.
Great Northern from LA are previously unknown to me. They sport fairly clean keyboard-aided cinematic textures not unlike those of The Delgados. But the vocalist doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Emma Pollock. In some cases, song structures could benefit from greater maturation. But all in all not bad.
The Gutter Twins are hot off the gate with "The Stations" (I think) and from there on out it's one fleshy, grimy, smoldering tune after another. The pair (whom Dulli has dubbed "the Satanic Everly Brothers") have already played a handful of shows with their four-man touring band to preview Saturnalia (release March 4). I hesitate to say too much about individual songs because I don't really know the album yet. (In addition to most of the Saturnalia tracks, we get Massive Attack's "Live With Me" that Twilight Singers feat. Lanegan covered on Stitch In Time EP and, I think, a cover of Jose Gonzalez's "Down the Line"?) What I can say is that although not all songs come off great, mostly they sound majestic, and that overall the material compares favorably with anything (including the strong 2006 record Powder Burns) that Dulli has done with Twilight Singers, even if it doesn't reach the heights of the best Afghan Whigs stuff or Lanegan's solo work. On stage, Dulli is, expectedly, the more energetic of the two, rocking out around the immobile Lanegan who maintains his slight forward lean, with one hand on the mic and the other on the stand, for the entire 75-or-so-minute set to give an unadorned delivery of one of the best rock voices of our generation.
At one point only, the facade cracks: as Lanegan's solo track "No Easy Action" (one of the five encores, all culled from Lanegan's solo work or Twilight Singers) receives an enthusiastic reception, Dulli laughs and whispers something to Lanegan's ear, giving us the spectacle of seeing Lanegan smile for more than a few seconds. Lanegan also seems to be clean: unlike some other times I've seen him, he's got some flesh on his bones and isn't pale as a ghost. I hope The Gutter Twins ends up being a fruitful collaboration for Lanegan, my favorite artist of the two. His and Dulli's different strengths have at least a chance of complementing each other nicely and their stage chemistry seems to work OK. This performance, at any rate, was deeply convincing and impressive.
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