On The List :: Augustines and Frightened Rabbit @ Webster Hall [10.25.13]

This review runs first and with great photographs from Sean O'Kane at Bowery Presents House List blog.

Frightened Rabbit and Augustines are nearly mirror images of each other: one Scottish, one raised in the wilds of Brooklyn, each driven to find salvation in ripping guitar-drum-and-bass rock songs. Augustines frontman Billy McCarthy, who is leading the third iteration of the band once known as Pela and then We Are Augustines before landing on their current nomenclature, admitted as much at a sold-out Webster Hall on Friday night, when they opened for their Scottish counterparts. “I’m gonna miss them so goddamn much,” warbled McCarthy about Frightened Rabbit in his trademark gravel-flecked baritone. The parallels were obvious under the sweeping stage lights, both groups pitting themselves firmly against the forces of modernity, trying to recapture a world of unfiltered misery and saviors, a time when people loved people enough to be destroyed by them.

There wasn’t an ounce of irony in either band. Augustines played “Cruel City,” a song about being miserable in New York City, and the single from their upcoming second full-length, and McCarthy yelled, “That was for you!” to wild applause. The audience didn’t exactly come for misery, but rather to experience the redemptive power of an emotive past, to bathe in the pain of others for whatever that would be worth. As if unifying their purpose, Scott Hutchinson, lead singer of Frightened Rabbit, joined Augustines on “Headlong into the Abyss,” a song that either band could have penned.

Frightened Rabbit took the stage backed by their monstrous half-crucifix-half-telephone-poll backdrop that has become the band’s iconography. While the saving was strictly lyrical, a fan in the 10th row stared down Hutchinson and mouthed every word to the opener, “Holy,” seemingly unaware of the other 1,500 people in attendance. Frightened Rabbit followed the tune about divinity and personal failings with “Modern Leper,” another vaguely biblical reference and the song that broke the band firmly into mainstream indie rock six years ago.

The band sounded explosive and tight, marching through “Nothing Like You” and “Living in Colour” before playing one of their first releases, “Old Old Fashioned.” “This is a dancing song,” said Hutchinson, the arrangement’s sea-shanty chord progression erupting from the fret board on his guitar. Of course, it wasn’t just a dancing song—it was about getting back to an old, lost world, a song about waltzing around the living room with a woman who might well hold the power to make you utterly miserable. The redemption would be in older patterns. Frightened Rabbit then played “December’s Traditions,” about the exacting power and misery of these yearly rituals. It wouldn’t even matter that Hutchinson climbed into the venue’s balcony late in the set, because Frightened Rabbit
and Augustines had already crawled backward in search of salvation in something old.

Slow Machete :: "Grey Eyed Bird"

A looping and brilliantly exotic slice of pop, Slow Machete's "Grey Eyed Bird" emerges from a cacophony of samples to coalesce into a brilliant, organized architecture. The project is a mixture of six Haitian vocalists and DC-based producer, Joseph Shaffer. The outcome is something that is equal parts Lord Huron, Pela (the vocals especially recall the "The Trouble With River Cities") and Tune-Yards. The difference here is the moral authority, not exclusively Western, Developed-World artists doing Developing World pop. The globe trotting proves decent and equitable, not the unintentionally exploitative pseudo-imperialism of a band like Vampire Weekend. Given that Arcade Fire's coming record is said to be inspired by Haitian rhythms, it makes sense to get closer to the essence, a project in which Slow Machete appears to be actively engaged.



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The White Whales :: "Flowers"

The White Whales build a bit of Americana-pop that slams and slides between giddy alt-country influences, mainstream indie rock and bits of punk. On the immediately satisfying "Flowers," from the band's debut LP, Lakestate, lightning guitar pick-ups and a racing snare chase each other around a buried vocal that recalls the best parts of the Pela/We Are Augustines catalogue. More broadly, the White Whales paraphrase the type of pop that the National made so deservedly famous. The elegy here - and there always is a fair share - is straight fatalism; we will all die. The lyrics damn this existential darkness at the center of modern life, "when I go bury me in flowers," and mourn the geographic and temporal markers that fail to help us grapple with the passing of time, "the river bleeds into the sea/a century has ended." Lakestate is full of these sorts of moments, deep sadness recast as triumphant moral-victory anthem, surely one of the best truly independent rock debuts of the year.

On The List :: NO @ Glasslands [8.23.13]

Other than opening for Icona Pop on a fun but strange one-off bill, this was NO's "first proper show in New York," their lead singer told an increasingly crowded Glasslands on Friday night. Other than this admission, a special moment for its novelty as firsts are, the particulars of NO's debut on the New York scene were undeservedly banal. Glasslands, even with its newly bourgeois veneer (a bouncer, a rope outside), still lies in the gentrifying industrial wastes of South Williamsburg and fire codes under two hundred. With one great EP already released and an a certainly excellent full-length record to come, this was hardly the conquering entry to New York that this band will likely receive the next time they return to the confines of the city. For those in attendance at Glasslands, or those who caught NO at Mercury Lounge the following night, they had an opportunity to see the moment before the moment, a band about to about to be more broadly popular than either audience or performer entirely predict at a half-full Glasslands on a summer Friday night in August.

The band opened with the pounding, "In Another Life", a song that models the band's methodolgy of big second movements and anthemic choruses. As the song explodes into its finishing kick, the band, a surprising six-piece, churns behind their three guitars, bass, drums and vocals. It's a reversed dramatic irony; they know something that we do not, and each of these arrangements will have a surprising and furious twist. The band motored through single, "What's Your Name," with its prophetic lyric, "Get ready, I'm on my way," EP-track, "There's A Glow" and new songs, "Monday" and "So Scared." Sounding an awful lot like the National, a comparison the band is surely tired of, each arrangement is firm and angular, the band channeled more post-punk than their heretofore recorded material reflects.

Closing with old favorite, "Stay With Me," new song, "North Star," "Long Haul," before a final song that was unannounced and unknown to most of the audience, NO proved a depth and breadth of catalog that both surprised and impressed. They won't return to Glasslands. This night emerged as strictly developmental, a band designed and built to transcend itself in this moment. There was a measure of sadness then, these the fans who would help the band grow, who would be the initial body of their later success, but who might never again see them this close, this available, half-full on a weekend night.

NO :: "What's Your Name" and "Eleven Eleven"

"Get ready and I'm on my way," promises the lyrics of NO's newest single, "What's Your Name." It works on two levels, a lyric truth and the current state of affairs for one of the most promising unsigned American rock bands. Somewhere between the National and Pela, NO are product of the people who were left to grow up in this fake empire. The bands growing up in the ashes of this system won't have the luxuries of the ones who rode the horse down. The guitars charge ahead, an undercurrent of real menace in the bass, while the drums on "What's Your Name" are schizophrenic, languid splashing tams in one moment and ratatat snares the next. It all adds up to an undeniable sense of becoming, that this might not be exactly that thing, but it is very nearly there. This is another double-truth, this seven-inch double single for White Iris Records is only a precursor the band's true full length due next year.

Daytona :: "Undertow"

When Pela said, "yeah, there's an undertow, but it ain't got me" in 2007, the implied assumption was it would have gotten you by now. It was New York after all, an inverted version of Sinatra's "If I can make it there ..." thesis; if I can make it there, I'll be dragged out to sea. Pela, it is worth noting, is now We Are Augustines, opening for the Counting Crows, an undertow of an entirely different variety. Another Brooklyn band, Daytona, who sound a lot more like Beach Fossils, have a debut single with the same notion, "Undertow" and lyrics like "you'll never make it out alive" and "when the undertaker reads your palm and says, 'My son, you're going to die.'" The fear is tacit, even in the first movement where a waltzing tempo and fuzzy guitars collude to make it seem like all your Instagram photos are going to add up to more than solipsism, your twenties as a slow dance. The second movement is splashy, all flecking guitars and depressive lyrics leading to an updated Chopin's Awakening where the deadly current isn't in the water but you end up there anyway. If there's an undertow, it already has you.

NO :: "In Another Life"

The next big band to come out of Los Angeles could easily be NO. Cutting somewhere between the grandiosity of group vocals and the baritone gravel of a lead singer that eerily evokes Berninger's National, the band crafts the same kind of burnished melodies end up as well-worn, memorized hooks. "In Another Life", one of six excellent songs on the band's debut EP, builds its house out of a crystalline guitar and one of those authoritarian bass lines that has three notes and each one hits you in the chest. The second movement opens wide with chanting vocals and horns - a flashback to the last 30 seconds of "Fake Empire" - and a finishing kick that turns the title lyric into a statement of purpose and profound failure. The aesthetics revive the energy of the National in 2005 with some of the critical refinements and depth that both the original and its imitators (here think: Pela come We Are Augustines) added in the intervening years. NO plays SXSW this week and returns to LA for a free Monday show at the Echo. They are simply the most promising independent rock band this writer has heard in at least a calendar year, poised to do some absolute damage in the coming one.

On The List :: Antlers, Dawes, Deer Tick, Pela, Tokyo Police Club @ MHOW [5.27.09]

If there was a bill in New York not to miss, it was this one. Kicking off at 8.30 with Antlers taking the stage in front of a nearly empty Music Hall of Williamsburg and closing with Tokyo Police Club hitting the stage at nearly 1.30 in the morning, this show didn't quit and it didn't miss.

Antlers took the stage and opened with an ambient progression of fuzz and held-keys. It was a quiet way to grab a crowd but this is a band that wrote an album about terminal illness. Were you expecting chimes and G, C, D progressions? The band is a little precious at times. Their lead-singer over-does it with his falsetto and the band is a little too in-love with being serious. "Two" was pumped up live, trading it's tragic reverence for double-tap drums and a pace the band rarely approaches in other tunes. Leaving the stage someone leaned over and said, "I liked that." He would later admit it wasn't that good. This sort of sums it up.

Dawes offered an inoffensive, if well-manicured, set of southern-rock. Roots rock doesn't always rub New York the right way but on this night the crowd bought in, stayed upstairs and sang along. Surely, this band has a secret collection of Neil Young records they listen to late at night. The songs are smooth and the band is tight. That doesn't mean it blew the doors off. But it does count for something.

The night turns during Deer Tick's set. From my native Rhode Island, the band brought the state flag on stage. The word emblazoned on it was unmistakable: "hope." But by the end of the set it very well could have said, "dance." Deer Tick, a throwback four-piece, are equal parts 1950s rock and 2009 folk. That's meant as a compliment. Using stand-up bass and tight-as-a-drum three-part harmony, the band got the crowd shuffling around. The lead-singer's voice is as harsh as it is cathartic - full of pain and pathos.

With considerable pressure, Pela took the stage announcing themselves as "The Pelas." It was a joke from their frontman, who looks like he could have played linebacker in college. The guy is an absolute train of human mass and energy. It's a wonder this band isn't huge. They are everything good about The National with none of the self-flagellation. With a clear desire to kill the crowd, Pela busts around the stage with little regard for their own equipment or personal safety (this is a band that canceled a tour after one member fell on broken glass and suffered a massive wound). The moment of the night comes in the band's second-to-last song: frontman, lit from the back, sweating furiously, with a rapidly burning cigarette in his mouth. The smoke pours from his mouth as the band thrash through "Tenement Teeth." It's after midnight in Williamsburg and you can be sure that this is everything your parents warned you about. Smoking, bars, loud music, personal injury, rock music - but Pela is the best band in the world in this moment, thrashing, moving and in control. There's nothing dangerous about passion, the pitfalls are at the periphery.

And Tokyo Police Club, well, it was 1.30 and after Pela the night was over for me anyways. I heard later that the set was good. For the best bill of the year, it almost didn't need a headliner.

Listen ::

Antlers - "Two"
Dawes - "When My Time Comes Around"
Deer Tick - "Easy"
Pela - "Waiting On The Stairs"
Tokyo Police Club - "In A Cave"