After spending all day at the main
festival at Auditorium Shores (see my earlier post), I got on my bike and headed to the North Door for
one of the festival's free after-party shows. It ended up being quite
a late night.
Event: Fun Fun Fun Fest, Day 2, Late
Night Show
Venue: The North Door
Location: Austin, Texas
Date: 9 November 2013
Introduction:
Somehow FFF is able to sponsor free shows all over downtown after the
main festival wraps up. There were fourteen options on Saturday. I
still can hardly believe it. Not knowing exactly how it worked, I
wanted to make sure my venue of choice didn't fill up before I got
there, and I decided against hopping from venue to venue. It turns
out I was one of the first people to arrive and the show started even
later than planned, so I had nothing to fear. In the future, I would
consider not just sticking
to one place, but that might
take more planning than I had done.
First
up were Saint Rich,
an indie rock duo augmented by three extra musicians on stage. At
first I thought they seemed
very young, and I favorably
compared them to Echo & the Bunnymen in 1980: not really
because of sound or style, but rather
because of their confidence and composure in the face of unknowing,
unwitting listeners. They seemed like they knew what they were doing,
like they were older than their years. And it turns out that this
kind of makes sense. Although this band is quite new and they just
released their first album a month ago, both primary members are also
veterans of Delicate
Steve, whom
I know best as the band described by the most hilarious press release
ever. (Seriously, read it. It is glorious. NPR did a great write-up of it.)
Unlike
Delicate Steve, Saint Rich are not an instrumental band. In fact,
Saint Rich don't sound all that similar to Delicate Steve at all. I
can't decide which I like better. Delicate Steve have
the wider, richer sound palette, and the allure of almost breaking
uncovered ground, but Saint Rich are
catchier, and for what it's
worth the music industry
seems to prefer
vocals.
Thankfully, Saint Rich have
both good lyrics and a good singer, so it wouldn't surprise me if
they actually end up going farther in the end. It helps that the
musicianship is solid,
too. I bought their CD and talked to the singer after the show.
Hunters:
I can't find any information
about this band. I'm not sure if their name has a definite
article. They aren't even the only punk band with that name. The band
I saw featured a flailing, very high-energy frontwoman and a male
guitarist with great (i.e. big and wild) hair. He sang a few lines,
too. I appreciated their intensity, but I couldn't understand a word
of the lead singer's lyrics, and their thrashing about got a bit
monotonous.
Bleached:
Yes, I saw them twice in the same day. They played a similar set to
their afternoon performance, but perhaps somewhat shorter. They
mentioned playing two covers, but I only recognized the same Damned
cover as before. They also had some mic problems; they kept asking
the soundperson to raise their vocals and it seemed like they never
got what they wanted. I had a hard time hearing their vocals, and it
didn't help that they had some feedback problems as well. They still
played just as well as before and somehow they still had a lot of
energy. This time around, though, I felt like they were leaning far
closer to punk rock than the more conventional rock I remembered from
the afternoon. I don't know if it was just the environment, or maybe
the preceding and succeeding bands, but something made me feel like
they were punkier than before.
I was
going to leave at that point due to exhaustion, but I started talking
to another audience member, and then The Men
were soundchecking, so I stayed for most of their set. Honestly, I
probably should have just left when I meant to – I wouldn't have
missed anything. Despite that they feature two guitarists, a bassist,
and a pedal steel player, I could hardly distinguish anything except
for the snare drum and some shouted yelps. There was no texture, no
nuance, just a wall of distortion. How boring! I must have missed
something, because this is
apparently a popular band. Maybe they're better on record, but their
live performance offered nothing to me.
(Of course, their astoundingly creative name makes searching for
their music online a breeze. And
it's not like anyone else thought of that name first.) How any reviewer could call
them "post-punk" is beyond me.
Scores:
Saint Rich: A
Saint Rich: A
Hunters:
C
Bleached:
B-
The
Men: D
Overall:
B-
Final Thoughts:
I probably should have just left after Saint Rich and found a
different venue.
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