On The List :: NO @ Mercury Lounge [3.22.14]

Taking the stage north of 12:30, a time that was, "the latest show [they've] ever played" according to lead-singer and part-time conductor, Bradley Carter, Echo Park denizens NO arrived in a New York market they are still in the process of conquering. Bridging the gap between Saturday night and Sunday morning, a crowd fueled by liquid courage and plunging inhibitions sang along with the band's post-National jams (what to do in a facsimile of the fake empire?) - one of those rock concerts that makes the viewer think: "Why aren't these guys absurdly famous?" and "I know why these guys aren't absurdly famous yet." in the same moment.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with the music, one of the general absurdities of seeing bands in 2014, because the music itself represents a titanic slice of indie rock. NO is a six-piece, a gut feeling of one-too-many. The arrangements were tight and sizeable, Carter flourishing his hands - he doesn't play anything but in a different way than Matt Berninger doesn't play anything - as the band proceeded in and out of breaks. Carter alighted to the idea of being our David Blaine for the evening on songs like "Long Haul" and "Another Life": He knew how the tricks went, but it doesn't hurt to raise ones eyebrows and hands as if to say, "Not bad, right?" at the critical moment of the reveal.

Will the indie rock world have room for one more at the table, for a band that easily could be called Mistaken For Strangers and tour the country as a National cover band? It's an unfair metric for a good group of musicians sporting a strong crowd late on Saturday night. They should reasonably be playing at Webster Hall with the Augustines and Frightened Rabbits of the world; there is little difference in market or quality. The group vocals, and there were a lot of them, moved the audience and band together. Whatever the future holds, there are worse things to be than a hotly buzzed band from LA playing downtown in New York, and New York, as well as the rest of the country will be hearing and seeing a healthy measure more of them as the continue to snowball through 2014.

NO :: "Leave The Door Wide Open"

NO, a bunch of guys who play what you'd have to call "post-National" rock, debut their newest self, signed to Arts and Crafts, full-length record on the way in February, with lead track, "Leave The Door Wide Open". More than a fair share of bombast creeps in here, backing call-and-response chants of the title lyric owing to the band being a six-piece, and a final movement that sends the arrangement to the top of the biggest rooms. Even the blithe lyric, "We make some noise inside a room and call it art" belies the obvious self-consciousness here. This is a rock band staring you in the face and asking you to feel something: the old Coldplay trick. It works, making NO a band who could easily break out and through in 2014.

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.

Top 50 Songs of 2012 :: [30-21]

Welcome to our annual countdown of the 50 best songs of the calendar year. Songs must be from an EP, LP or demo released during 2012 and no band may appear twice. Today, we count down 30 to 21.

30. Reptar - "Orifice Origami"



No one had more fun in 2012 than Reptar did during the opening thirty seconds of single, "Orifice Origami". The shuddering synthesizer arrangement coalesced for a brief moment on the shouting lyric, "Something's not all right here," a sort of something-is-rotten-in-the-state-of-Denmark for a generation of kids almost as gutted and even less decisive than Hamlet. Irony was the twist, a party song about everything being all fucked up, dancing on the edge of a disaster, or what your summer should have sounded like if you were under the age of 30 and stuck with these circumstances.


29. NO - "Another Life"



 "Another Life," represented the resounding announcement from post-National rock outfit NO. It channeled Berninger to be sure, only missing a lyric about apple pies or lemonade or something in the lemonade. It was Americana all the same, dark slices of counterfactual, lines like "we'll get pretty after," all targeting a group of future selves that would self-actualize. It wasn't "Mr. November" but on the shaking conclusion, it was NO's "Mr. November".


28. Paradise - "Endless Wave"



Paradise is shaping up to have a massive 2013 around first demo "Endless Wave," a carefree surf-pop arrangement that owes just as much to the Beach Boys as it does to LCD Soundsystem. Opening to a stomping middle section, the band concerned itself with languid days of summer and a sort of zero-friction reality where the confetti cannons explode and we're all carried away on their "Endless Wave".


27.The Rest - "Laughing Yearning"



The most criminally underrated rock band of 2012, The Rest released a crushingly great record and no one from mainstream independent music circles, at least in the US, seemed to go as bananas as they, perhaps, should have. "Laughing Yearning," without spoiling all the fun, is the song that Local Natives will struggle to find on their second long-player, a wide open and Western rock song about hysterical lost love. These were celebratory drums, and a soaring melody, all colliding in one of the best chord resolutions of the year, the lead singer moaning into the maw, tumbling downwards and finding himself in the final group of choruses.

26. Bloc Party - "Truth"



No one made guitars sound so at once warm and abrasive as Bloc Party did on "Truth". Easily the best song off what was a forgettable fourth record - and it was called Four which should have been the first non-silent sign of alarm - "Truth" churned forward toward a crystalline chorus. The band's traditional sawing guitars were here harnessed for the purposes of elevation, signaling a danger and a submission, Kele promising, "I am yours now, respectfully." 

25. The Mean Season - "Hearts"



It was gritty stuff on The Mean Season's "Hearts," opening lyrics about past pursuits and cold hearts. The innovation, beyond the shabby indie rock arrangement, was the critical commentary about the heart ever became a symbol for love. Perhaps it is just a mean little fist that keeps you from dying. Maybe love is elsewhere, rather than the four-chambered flesh beneath your rib cage. Even a bit meta, the band demanded, "Who decided it was such perfect symbol for love/when it's only an organ pumping your blood?" in one of the best, worst and most memorable lyrics of the year.


24. Theme Park - "Jamaica"



Like St. Lucia, Theme Park was actively engaged in making equatorial music in 2012. "Jamaica" joined the already great single, "Two Weeks," to firm up the sense that Theme Park could be staging a take over in the next few months. "Jamaica" was carefree, an instantly memorable hook and a chorus that drifted along under its own power.


23. Thieving Irons - "Poison"

If "Poison" didn't make sense to you, you either had an intensely bucolic adolescence or missed it all together. The narrative thrust, the repeating hook, "I've got poison in my head," exploded into a middle section that was the closest rock music has come to the churn and crush of the finishing kick of LCD's "All My Friends." After all, "Poison" had a second motif. "You were always on my mind," they sang, a reference that this poison might have a proper noun attached to it. She, like the song that followed, was an absolute killer.

22. Harriet - "I Slept With All Your Mothers"



There wasn't much to "I Slept With All Your Mothers." It was less than two-and-a-half minutes long, a lonely little piano and some plodding guitars. It was the vocal, a screaming and insistent melody, not to mention the most pathological conclusion of any rock song of the year, that sent "I Slept With All Your Mothers" near the top of 2012. It was all love and rage, a "fuck off" to the girl who broke your heart, and a middle of the town square scream, "I Slept With All Your Mothers!" before wading off into the friscalating darkness alone.


21. Suburban Living - "I Don't Fit In"



It was the Cure song that the Cure never released. "I Don't Fit In" was independent rock's "Friday I'm In Love" for 2012, only without the saccharine coating and the radio play. All reverb and washing guitars, Suburban Living chased the melody around for awhile before shouting the title lyric against a backdrop of glittering guitars. It was the final downbeat, a relentless and dogged driver, that propelled the arrangement along. This was the music the Drums could never dream of making, a sadness of an unarticulated type that no one has time for anymore.

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.

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.