Tungs, Creeping Weeds, and Palindrone
Saturday, April 16 at Strange Matter
In contrast with some other indie-oriented shows I’ve recently attended at Strange Matter, this one was rather empty. Poorly attended shows have the bizarre effect of making things more awkward for the people who do show up. Even if the band playing takes it in stride that only a dozen or so people are watching them, it feels weird applauding after a song if you’re one of the only ones doing it. What can be even worse is when the band gets bitter about the small crowd. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than getting a bad vibe from a band while they’re playing, as if they are looking at the few people watching them and thinking, “Why aren’t there more of you?” Hey, don’t get weird with me, I always want to shout. I’m HERE! Fortunately, none of the bands that performed at this show made things awkward for me. And while none of them played to more than 20 people or so, all of them went over well with the people who watched them, and in turn seemed to appreciate the amount of applause they got.
Tungs, Creeping Weeds, and Palindrone
Saturday, April 16 at Strange Matter
In contrast with some other indie-oriented shows I’ve recently attended at Strange Matter, this one was rather empty. Poorly attended shows have the bizarre effect of making things more awkward for the people who do show up. Even if the band playing takes it in stride that only a dozen or so people are watching them, it feels weird applauding after a song if you’re one of the only ones doing it. What can be even worse is when the band gets bitter about the small crowd. There’s nothing more uncomfortable than getting a bad vibe from a band while they’re playing, as if they are looking at the few people watching them and thinking, “Why aren’t there more of you?” Hey, don’t get weird with me, I always want to shout. I’m HERE! Fortunately, none of the bands that performed at this show made things awkward for me. And while none of them played to more than 20 people or so, all of them went over well with the people who watched them, and in turn seemed to appreciate the amount of applause they got.
Palindrone started off the evening, and probably had the biggest crowd of the night. Led by Christian Brady of Antlers, the group also features Antlers bassist Ian Calder on second guitar. As with recent Antlers work, there is a droning, psychedelic quality to what Palindrone does. This quality probably leaves the biggest initial impression, combining with Christian’s high, ethereal vocals to give their music a strong resemblance to that of Mazzy Star. However, there are a lot of interesting and original elements at work under the surface of Palindrone’s music, and the one that struck me the most was Stephanie Brady’s drumming. It’s clear from watching her play that she hasn’t been trained as a drummer, and that she figured out everything she’s doing on her own. What this leads to is a tribal, tom-heavy style of drumming that is way less about keeping time than it is about transposing the guitar riffs that drive Palindrone’s songs onto the drums. If Christian or Ian played a rhythm guitar riff with an aggressive strumming pattern, Stephanie would typically forsake keeping the basic backbeat of the song in order to replicate the guitar riffs with her drumming. She plays the drumkit like it’s a melodic instrument, and in so doing, emphasizes the melodies of the song. With bass replaced in the band’s lineup by Bethany Santos’s droning organ, this leaves Palindrone without any instrumental rhythmic grounding on a lot of their songs, and their music ends up awash in an incredibly psychedelic haze. The songs themselves are typically midtempo, based around lackadaisical vocal parts and simple sunburnt rock riffs. I hear some Neil Young and some Meat Puppets as well as the aforementioned Mazzy Star in the riffs they write. But their approach towards performing their songs is so unique that it elevates Palindrone from merely enjoyable to a transcendent live experience. Don’t sleep on this band.
Philadelphia’s Creeping Weeds played next, and while the lead vocals seemed a bit loud in the mix, they otherwise were lucky enough to get an excellent sound mix that did great justice to their laid-back, melodic sound. Their set concentrated on tunes from their new album, See Through, and if anything improved on the versions from the album, with the songs sounding more immediate and accessible than their studio counterparts. Psychedelic sounds and studio effects that seem reasonably prominent on the album took a definite backseat live, and what instead came across were excellent pop songs by a well-rehearsed live band. Like fellow indie-popsters Vampire Weekend, Creeping Weeds draw on sounds that have often been classified as “world music”–which is, admittedly, a less-than-descriptive catchall term that really just means “music not from the United States or Western Europe.” Where Vampire Weekend draw influence more specifically from African pop music, Creeping Weeds seem to mix in more of a tropical, Caribbean pop sound, which lends all of their songs a quality well suited as the soundtrack to a day spent at the beach. The songs may not have sounded quite at home in a dark rock club in the middle of the night, but Creeping Weeds played well enough to allow for that sundrenched feeling to come through nonetheless. They ended by running through a combined rendition of “Vampires” and “Greetings From SLO,” two of See Through‘s best songs, and singer/guitarist Pete Stewart’s set-ending solo was the perfect loud, euphoric conclusion to an excellent set of upbeat, memorable songs. Hopefully next time they come through Richmond, Creeping Weeds will get to play these songs to a bigger crowd.
Tungs finished off the evening. While I thoroughly enjoy Tungs’s music, I can also completely understand why they haven’t quite managed to develop their own niche in the local Richmond scene. Many of the most prominent elements of the way they run their band, from midset switching of instruments to jam-oriented songwriting and use of unconventional instrumentation, exist in order to facilitate the creative spirit that drives their music as a whole. And that’s a really good thing that I’m sure has a lot to do with the way they are constantly evolving musically, coming up with new tunes and new sounds every time I see them play. However, I think that their focus on facilitation of creativity can sometimes come at the expense of accessibility, and their set at this show was a perfect example of that. Tungs started out as a trio before expanding to a four-piece last year, but in recent months, the fourth member has departed, and they’ve returned to their original trio configuration. They are doing less of the instrument switching now that they’re a three-piece again, and I approve of this move, as it should give them a more unified sound. They did do one instrument switch at this show, though, starting the set with usual drummer Paul Himmelman on guitar, while usual guitarist Alex Criqui played drums. Like a lot of the material I’ve heard them play lately, this first song was noisy and uptempo, mixing shoegaze-style guitar distortion with the driving motorik pulse of 70s Krautrock bands like Can. The combination made me think of New Zealand’s Bailter Space. They also reminded me of another New Zealand band, noise experimentalists Dead C, with their use of two guitars and no bass, and the song’s pedal-manipulating feedback ending. In a live setting, Paul comes across as the loudest, most exuberant member of the band, even when he’s playing drums, so it’s no surprise that his turn at the front led to a distortion explosion. After he got behind the drums, the band played a few more songs in much the same noisy/uptempo vein, at first with Alex and Ben Miller playing two guitars, then later with Ben switching to bass.
Tungs were sounding really good (once I put in some earplugs), and the set probably would have turned out fine if Alex hadn’t broken a string. This is where Tungs’s emphasis on creativity and spontaneity kind of bit them in the ass. While Alex started changing his string, Ben and Paul went into an improvised bass/drum jam, and they never really came back from it. Alex eventually got his guitar working again, but instead of starting another song, Tungs kept jamming for another 15 minutes or so, finally stopping when Ben’s bass amp cut out and the jam fell apart. The first half of their set had been really good, and I’m sure there were some good ideas somewhere in the jam that will eventually turn into full-fledged Tungs songs. But honestly, it was probably more fun to play than it was to listen to. There weren’t many members of the crowd left by this point in the night, either, and the jam all but cleared the room. Tungs have some really great music in them, and they may someday provide a consistently excellent live experience, but on the whole, this wasn’t their night. By the time they were done, I was more than ready to head home.
