musicfestnw

So I got a little behind. Forgive me. Let me shift into present tense so I can pretend I'm not writing two days late.

Friday! Friday is a day for sleeping in and enduring unsuccessful shopping trips. However, it's also a day for lucking out, and for arriving at venues in time to walk right in (for the most part). I turn up at the Wonder Ballroom at about 5:15 for Britt Daniel's 5:30 set and there isn't even a slip of a line. However, there is — in what becomes the theme for the evening, and for the Wonder — a line for the bar. A line in which I stand, briefly, before Daniel goes on and I realize it was a stupid idea anyway.

I have a confession: I only really love one Spoon album. Just Girls Can Tell. And thus, once Daniel closes the goosebump-raising "Me and the Bean" I think I'd be happy to leave were I not holding out hope that he might also play "Anything You Want." He does play another Girls song, and some other songs I recognize, as well as one song on the bass and several with the nearly ubiquitous Janet Weiss, who plays with everyone and is so awesome her frequent appearances are never less than delightful.

Daniel is charming and sort of adorable in his tousled-bedhead way; he says he's been living in Portland for three years and it's still magical. I'm pretty sure he actually says "magical." It's sweet. The short is set and also sweet, and involves a song for which Daniel has to stop his drum machine, practice the chords and start again. I don't know why I find musician fuckups so charming.

Outside, I find Chuck and his friend, grumpy about the no-magical-press-pass access at the Wonder. The line for Built to Spill is long, and I don't envy those who get in the realization that they most likely won't be able to get a beer. BtS is beer music. I'm leaving 'cause I've got to get dinner, but also because I'm still bitter that they're playing Perfect From Now On rather than the clearly superior Keep It Like a Secret. I was in denial about this for so long that I convinced myself it was the latter album. Whoops.

After dinner, we head to the Towne Lounge for the Old Believers, whom I wrote about in July when they played Cozmic Pizza. That night, we missed most of the band's set because they went on long before we'd expected them to; tonight, we catch most of it, and it's fantastic and nostalgic and lovely and graceful as expected. There are other folks onstage with the core Believer duo; later I found out these other folks were Eskimo and Sons, but that's a post for Saturday's eventual blog. There is a sizable Willamette Week contingent at the Old Believers show, which leads me to some internal speculation about music for alt-weekly staffers that goes absolutely nowhere. Also, the Towne Lounge sells 24-ounce cans of Pabst. I should be immune to this sort of gimmick now, but despite my dislike for the gut-twisting cheap brew, I consider it. Briefly. The bar is a little bit dinky and a little bit dingy in just the right way and I think I would like to see more bands in its dark environs, often.

As the Old Believers come to a hand-clapping, crowd-pleasing end, we split for the Roseland and arrive just in time to get in another bar line. We stay in this one, though; I text with Chuck about Portland's best bands and the fact that the Crystal Ballroom, where he's seeing the over-hyped Vampire Weekend, has an actual press space. Crazy. Jaguar Love takes the stage and I immediately have a shit-eating grin on my face, because I love these guys. I love their batshit craziness, stupid white pants and singer Johnny Whitney's tendency to scream EVERYTHING at incomprehensible levels. (Check out WWeek's Musicfest diaries for an accurate and entertaining take on the band.) I love that they make catchy music that veers from almost power ballads to almost-Michael Jackson pop, but coat it all in a layer of noise and ridiculousness. I love that some of them used to be in two other awesome bands.

The bad thing about Jaguar Love is that most of Portland is standing still and staring blankly at the stage. I posit the theory that some of them are convinced this is a test of their TV on the Radio loyalties. Eventually, we make it upstairs and obtain beer from the fastest bartender on the planet. My friend Toby sends a text from Brooklyn that ends, "FUCK THIS SHIT I AM MOVING TO PORTLAND," which, well, hey, at the moment, I'm pretty in love with PDX myself, even if its denizens seem to dance even less than Eugeneans. As the show winds down, Whitney screams, "JAGUAR LOVE! JAGUAR LOVE! JAGUAR LOVE!" over and over again, and we can't contain the laughter. A bearded dude in a baseball hat one row up catches my boyfriend's eye and high-fives him. I wonder if he's laughing with the band, like me, or at them.

Musicfest runs like clockwork, so it's almost weird that TV on the Radio goes on a few minutes late. Downstairs, no one is dancing, which makes me cranky even though I'm sitting on my ass with a pint of porter. Eventually, I make my way back downstairs, stuff tissue in my ears, and slip through the crowd to near the front, where I find myself stuck behind a very tall blonde who keeps punching the air. I'm not sure this is the most ... understandable? response to TVOTR, but whatevs; at least she's into it.

Photo by Dominik Kolendo.

But it's not their best show, to be honest. It's the fourth or fifth time I've seen them, and something just seems a little less vibrant than usual — though at least part of that could be chalked up to the fact that the crowd is waiting for the band's new album rather than excited about hearing new songs they've come to love already. But singer Tunde Adebimpe (full disclosure: I knew Tunde in college) has enough personality to carry any TVOTR show through, and there's something sweetly (that word again!) appealing to his demeanor as he thanks the crowd; it's in such contrast to his constantly-in-motion, shimmying, magnificent and oratorial presence during the band's songs. If memory serves, the main part of the set ends without "Staring at the Sun," so of course they're going to do an encore. Of course. And it's — to borrow a word from Britt Daniel — damn near magical.

Everyone is going to Berbati's after this, so we decide to follow along just to see what all the fuss is about. When we get there, we finally get to use the magical part of the magic bulldozer passes and waltz right in, only to realize we don't want to be there. There's a stomping party vibe that doesn't sit right after the epic density of TVOTR. I stand in the bathroom line, sweating, and get a text from Chuck: "Donuts sound better than this band." Voodoo Doughnuts is down the block, and it's a tossup whether there's a longer line for sugar-coated treats or The Builders and the Butchers. We pass on both and call it a night. One more to go!

Battles at the Wonder Ballroom

M Ward at the Crystal Ballroom

White Fang at Satyricon

The audience at White Fang at Satyricon

White Fang at Satyricon

Packt like sardines in a crusht tin can for Vampire Weekend at the Crystal Ballroom

The band in question, Vampire Weekend, played to a tiny crowd at John Henry's last year

TV on the Radio at the Roseland Theater

Packt in the Roseland for TV on the Radio

Horse Feathers at Holocene

Blind Pilot had a half hour sound check for a half hour of music

Didn't get any good pix of Blind Pilot in action, so here they are at Sam Bond's last week

The audience for Blind Pilot at the Fez Ballroom

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Thao with the Get Down Stay Down at Holocene

Let's face it, MFNW is primarily a sport of boozing, schmoozing and bands getting hooked up with free corporate shwag. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I mean, it's a great time to be had, probably the best I've had in Portland since my best friend's mom took us all to see Disney on Ice circa 1992 at the Memorial Coliseum for my friend's birthday, and even bought us a McDonald's super value meal beforehand. That was something special. And MFNW sits up there near that experience.

It would be foolish to believe this "music festival" has anything to do with dispensing music to the widest audience possible. I saw roughly 15 bands over the course of three days and I had a friggin' ghost pass that let me in through the doors even when the line snaked for miles around the block. Think about that for a second. Over 200 bands and I saw 15 of them. That's only 7.5 percent of the Musicfest lineup Granted, I saw and heard some great stuff, but really, giving bands a set playtime of as much as an hour and a half (for major headlining acts) to as little as 20 minutes (at Rontoms) means you've got quantity trumping quality. And when half your time at MFNW is spent being hassled for spare change as you check your cell phone for the zillionth time while waiting to get into a venue
to see some band you're not even sure is still playing? That's called uncertain return on the investment. My only hope and prayer to next year's MFNW organizers: Please trim the thing down to just 100 bands, give each band a longer set and consolidate the venues to just the ones along Burnside (sorry
Wonder and Holocene! You're great, just inaccessible for most people who'd rather plunk down for cab fare than put the pedal to the power). With that said, thanks for putting on a premium music event in a city that's steadily
proclaiming itself the locale for premium music.

Without further ado ... SATURDAY

The Kill Rock Stars showcase at Holocene could've been
renamed "Willamette Week's Best New Bands: 2006-08." Sure, Horse Feathers and Shaky Hands have rightfully held the crown in years past, but Thao and the Get Down Stay Down could've qualified this year, despite not being
officially a Portland band (they're actually from Washington D.C./San Francisco, however that works out). Panther: Sorry, I skipped you for WW's Best
New Band 2009: Blind Pilot.

HORSE FEATHERS (9 pm, Holocene)

This band takes the stage as a trio of violinist (Peter
Broderick), cellist/backing vocalist (Heather Broderick) and an acoustic guitar/vocalist (Justin Ringle). The crowd is on their first drink, so they are patient and quiet and attentive as Ringle barely whispers into the mic, as if actually hearing his voice would be antiethical to HF's cause. Thus, the venue has the amp mic'd for good measure, as HF is a band you need to pay close attention to. Their last album, Words Are Dead, brought bedroom-folk to the masses and their newest album, House With No Home, which HF mostly played this eve, definitely caters to those who like gently falling into sleep with a CD spinning on the stereo. It's tender, sometimes poppy stuff that can drown out most worries of the day without making you feel like a total wuss for listening to it. The Feathers end their set at precisely the 9:40 pm mark, leaving us exactly 20 minutes to bike up to Burnside, take the Burnside Bridge
into downtown Portland, up Couch (pronounced "koo-tch") Street to 11th and over to the Fez Ballroom. We arrive just as they start cutting people off at the door.

BLIND PILOT (10:30 pm, Fez Ballroom)

I'm a little surprised there isn't a line stretching down
the street for Blind Pilot. I mean, the folk-pop outfit are opening for Sir-Mix-A lot. But they're definitely importing a large chunk of folks from the suburbs. Someone gives a shout-out to Sir-Mix-A lot (for no apparent reason) and a man probably in his mid-50s yells out, "You are the BEST band at Music Fest!" Other odd things keep happening, like:

1)
Israel Nebeker doesn't break a string until at least five
songs into their set.

2)
There is a huge roar from the crowd when the trumpeter does
his part. This makes him shy and the other band members smile.

3)
It takes nearly a half hour to do a full sound check and
nobody throws a beer bottle at the stage.

I really want to see Eskimo & Sons final show for a long
time, but figure I've seen them once at MFNW, might as well check out stuff I haven't seen. So I hop on my bike and cruise quite quickly all the way back to
Holocene.

THE SHAKY HANDS (11:30 pm, Holocene)

I hear very little of the Hands set after getting through
the door. Mostly I hear two songs and they both sound stellar. Their new album,Lunglight, is par excellence.

THAO WITH THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN (Midnight, Holocene)

Let's get this out of the way: While strumming her guitar,
Thao Nguyen looks like a Muppet. There, I said it. It's true. Just see for yourself. It's not a bad thing; it doesn't detract from her rock star onstage persona. In fact, to this Muppet fan, it made the evening extra special.

I heard of Thao back last spring, but didn't actively search out her music until recently. I wasn't too impressed. Not the kind of music I'd listen to over and over to while sitting at work. But Thao's live act is not to be missed. Boozed up on whiskey, she's a firecracker who doesn't miss a bang or a beat. Even the Holocene squatters, who normally like to have a contest to see who can stand the most statuesque, are moving a little bit. That says a lot. A real lot. Thao played a new song that Thao said was "for Portland." It was quite good. I'll have to give her full album another try sometime.
There's something that I'm missing, maybe.

Oh yeah, it's called the "live experience."

Thank you, MFNW. You made me a believer in real good live music. Now if only we could export that concept a little bit further south
… that'd be real nice.

As any rotten child with a mouthful of bile can tell you,sometimes Christmas is a shitty shitty time. Upon arrival at the Wonder
Ballroom (after a stopover at Rontoms for a few songs of Team Evil), we were greeted with the polite instructions that all press must get in line like all the other Proles. Too bad the line stretched around the block. Britt Daniel was just ending (see Molly's blog) and Built to Spill was going on next. Some
bitter MFNW-ers were walking away from the Wonder in bewilderment. Some clueless dumb-bummers were dubious that they couldn't get a ticket to the show at the
door. Wasting no time, we rode fast and furious to Backspace, downtown, to catch The Rainy States.

The Rainy States try to make their awkward case for
indie-rock. A small crowd of non-dancers watch the band. Ninkasi is on tap and
in bottles at this place, so we're set. The Rainy States get better as the set
progresses; the lead vocalist appears to be shy, politely reminding people that
"We have CDs in the back, if you're into that." We meet up with Ben
Moral (of The Morals) and he makes the best suggestion of the night: White Fang
at Satyricon, just a block over.

Satyricon is the John Henry's of Portland. We drink Hamm's
in the bar area. My attorney/therapist recommends I go interview the Monotonix
guys (who will be at the WOW Hall later this month). But they look busy and I'm
too livid and limp, a sorry sack of an excuse for a music journalist. Plus, the
Hamm's. The Hamm's. 'Nuff said.

White Fang is absolute fucking anarchy. Two drummers and a
vocalist who put all their energies into a moshpit-centered songs that last,
for reasons of safety, one-to-two minutes. There are more photographers at this
gig than a blind man can shake a stick at. The Monotonix guys walk through the
floor, get shoved a bit, and keep walking, with smirks on their mustachioed
faces. They are moving their gear into the Satyricon for what I think will be
the most blazingly amazing show I miss out on (for the lame-ness that will be
TV on the Radio later in the night, more on that later). White Fang's show ends
with a destroyed drumkit (from a flung bongo drum, naturally) and someone
receiving first-aid from a bartender (who asks in all seriousness, "Do you
have insurance? You might need to go to the hospital."). Outside the
Satyricon, it appears that someone dropped off a couch on the sidewalk and then
proceeded to bomb it with TNT, tear it to shreds with a crowbar and torched it
with a blowtorch. We walk the block back to Backspace.

We talk to the guys of The Rainy States and discuss the
possibility of coming to Eugene to play a Showcase of Portland Bands, possibly
curated by the Eugene Weekly and KWVA (more on that later, I hope). Typhoon
start up and I put in my earplugs (bought for a buck at Satyricon, much
needed). Typhoon have played Eugene before, but mostly at house shows. I write
in my notebook: "Chanting. Rock. Thrash. Crowd is stoic but singing
along." Backspace is packed as it's 9:30 pm and things are finally picking
up at MFNW.

Against every grain in my body, I decide to check out
Vampire Weekend at the Crystal Ballroom. We are whisked through the doors,
flashing our bulldozers, grab some McMenamin's and go to the press box, right
near the stage. I talk with two women on the fan side of the fence. They say
they just got a wristband today and might plan to see other bands later. So
basically they just paid over $50 each to see Vampire Weekend. I have to find
out what's so hot about this band. Turns out, the band knows how to write
catchy pop songs. Like Del the Funkee Homosapian (who said he wrote the
Gorillaz hit, "Clint Eastwood," after reading How To Make a Hit
Song), VW churn out catchy tunes that mine the same African rhythms that Paul
Simon dabbled with on Graceland. I'd call it college rock (all the duded are
Harvard grads) or Beach Bunny Rock/Pop. The Crystal is filled to the brim (I'll
upload pix on Sunday or Monday). At 11 pm we escape to the streets and return
to the Roseland for TV on the Radio.

TVOTR are sold out and the line stretches around the block.
Thankfully the door people wave us through, we get our bags checked (not as
thoroughly as at the Del show) and grab some good floor spots front and left of
center. My first thoughts are this: TVOTR kind of suck as a live act. They have
an intricate sound that is hard for them to replicate as a live act. Lots of
fuzz and feedback. The crowd takes awhile to respond. Also, the Roseland just
has piss poor acoustics, so that kind of brings them down. But about halfway
through the show TVOTR pick up steam, or maybe it's just that lots of people
leave the venue, opening up the possibility of dancing or moshing, that finally
gets the crowd worked up. I push my way to moshers front and center and for a
minute or more it feels like TVOTR have lived up to its hype. Then the show is
over and it's time to filter out the door.

I check out Builders and the Butchers at Berbati's
Pan. There is mass-migration to this show, the last of the night, and an
atmosphere of drunken douchebaggery pervades the space and the B&Bs music
turns into jock jams. Yick. I escape outside where I buy a peach fritter at
Voodoo Dougnuts and a carton of milk at a gas station. It's time to ride home.

Christmas came early to all the press peeps at MusicfestNW,
going down up here in Portland today through Saturday. The publicity folks
promised us, again and again, that press would have to wear the same $50
wristbands that regular patrons would wear. This meant that if venues were at
capacity we'd have to wait in line like all the other Proles. As it turns out,
they lied. Not only do we get laminated press badges that we can take on and
off at will, but they grant "immediate access to all shows including Nike
shows." Also worthy of mention: I was able to throw my bike into the back of my friend's car, so will be jetting around PDX on my bike all weekend, the first time I've ever done this.

Being press also guarantees access to a VIP Party going down
next to the Wonder Ballroom. From 6pm-9pm they serve up free finger foods
(mmmmm, pecan-crusted chicken sticks) and free booze (mmmm, shots of Southern
Comfort Lime). The party is more schmoozy-boozy than music-celebratory or
music-celebrity, though Hutch and Kathy of The Thermals are in attendance, as
well as some dudes wearing creepy Southern-hick hats (which make them look like
they're in some band).

(For a gallery of images of MFNW, go HERE.

BATTLES

(7pm, Wonder Ballroom)

Heavy metal jam rock electronica.

The line out the Wonder stretches at least a block long. All
shows at this venue are what my press pass refers to as "Nike shows,"
meaning they are free if you can pull yourself out of bed early enough to grab
a free wristband at one of several Jackpot Records locations (only one per
person). If you don't grab a free wristband there is no way to buy a ticket to
these shows so you either have to buy a $50 MFNW wristband or you're S.O.L. Or,
if you're a press passer, you have a bulldozer around your neck.

Walk in to hear a three-punch of "Atlas,"
"Lleyendecker" and some other song I remember quite distinctly
remembering. The closest we* can get to the front of the stage is the very back of the venue. We leave before their encore, but mostly to save our ears for more music. Note to self: Bring earplugs tomorrow.

ESKIMO & SONS

(8:20pm, Crystal Ballroom)

Tweecore bedroom indie chamber-pop with a side of R&B.

Biked our asses off to catch this act across town at the
Crystal. It was actually the fastest 2 miles on bicycle I've ever ridden, and also the most beautiful. Biking across the Broadway Bridge into downtown Portland just after sunset is an experience everyone should have at least a dozen times in their life. The ride is frenzied, but E&S are worth it. They've got
eight members onstage, plus The Old Believers! They got sax, trumpet, violin, a
vocalist whose voice will take your breath away and a ringleader who has his
back to the audience at all times. These guys are going to be big sometime soon,
if only they tried a little harder. Seems like mostly they've been given all
this attention despite themselves. Heck, M Ward asked them to open his show
personally. They're taking a "break" from being a band for an
indeterminate amount of time (their gig at the Towne Lounge on Friday is their
last for awhile), which will only further slow down the process of becoming the
Next Big Thing. E&S are like an American version of Los Campesinos!

M WARD

(10pm, Crystal Ballroom)

After a heart-attack burger below the Crystal at Ringler's
Pub, we head back into the Crystal for M Ward. It's 9:50pm and there still
isn't a line to get in, so we don't have to use our bulldozer lanyards. Inside,
M Ward takes his sweet time, hitting the stage a good 15 minutes late. The
first two numbers are uppity numbers with an almost-full band backing him. Then
he slides into a couple of solo bits. M Ward is like the Cat Power of male
vocalists. His vocals are achingly tender, sometimes that's really all you
need. Other times, like when your feet are swelling the size of beachballs
because you've been standing all day long, this sort of slow-drag on a
cigarette style of music tends to increase the Podiatry Factor. We slip out of
the Crystal around 11pm, intent on a new venue, and a new crowd.

DEL THA FUNKEE HOMOSAPIAN

(11pm, Roseland Theater)

After a ridiculously long body and bag search at the
Roseland entrance (where the bag-checker pilfers through every last nook and
cranny…and I thought they put a stop to that because bag-checkers kept getting
stabbed with needles…), we finally got upstairs to see some Del. Fortunately we
were just on time, as Del took the stage shortly after arriving. The venue isn't at capacity, but those in attendance are into it like no other. Curiously, I don't see many wristbands, which means most of the patrons just bought a ticket to see Del, and only Del. They're waving their hands in the air, like they just don't care. My feet are crumbling beneath me and the acoustics at the Roseland are grating on my tinnitus, so it's time to escape back to the Portland streets.

NADA SURF

(Midnight, Berbati's Pan)

Outside the Roseland, we tell people we're going to see Nada Surf. Some guy leans in and asks, repeatedly, where is Nada Surf playing? What time? As if he just heard they were playing, like he was going to text his buds to meet him over at Berbati's for some nostalgic trip back to being a sophomore in college in 1994, hearing their hit song, "Popular," on MTV and getting all giggly about it. Turns out, Nada Surf no longer play "Popular," but their newer songs are just as poppy, just as much a shout-out to the drinking songs of the Irish, only with a white-collar indie rock American University slant. The shows at MFNW that start after midnight tend to be the shows of the Witching Hour. The attendees are already sloshed at this point (hey, whaddya thinks gonna happen when you hold an entire music festival at various bars around town?) and so people get weird. We befriend a young veterinarian who just got out of Del and is enthusiastic about seeing Vampire Weekend and Menomena. I joke that I could probably just go to the Crystal to find her the next few days, but then she offers to buy us drinks. When a drunk woman is offering to buy two men shots of Southern Comfort, there's something wrong with this picture, and the rest of NS's set is blurred into a muddy self-portrait. After the show, we furiously bike back to our homebase in SE Portland and I suddenly realize: Hey, Portland really IS a bike-friendly town.

On tap for today:
Britt Daniel at 5:30pm
Built to Spill at 7pm
(wherever the whims pull me)
TV on the Radio at 11:30pm
The Builders & Butchers at 1am

we* by "we" I mean to refer to myself and my attorney/therapist, aka my roommate.

Honestly? I didn't think my first night at MusicfestNW would involve staying out until after one in the morning, allowing my ears to be totally fucking battered, but lo, it did, and it was a little bit awesome. I did stay at Holocene all night, true, but I knew Calendar Editor Chuck Adams was out and about — I'm sure he'll check in later about Battles and M. Ward — and, well, see, it's more fun to have someone to talk shit with at shows, and the only other person I knew who'd be out last night was at Holocene. So at Holocene I stayed (after a brief and unsatisfying trip to the super-speshul VIP tent outside the Wonder Ballroom, where the cocktails, though they don't deserve the name, were all made with Vitamin Water. I ditched mine — nasty! — and grabbed two tiny bottles of the stuff for later. I'm a sucker).

The Holocene lineup looked like this:

8 pm: Silver Summit
9 pm: Oxford Collapse
10 pm: Bodies of Water
11 pm: Starfucker
Midnight: Deerhunter

Silver Summit kind of went in one ear and out the other. Pretty enough, but not enough to grab my attention; I bought an old-fashioned (they make really good ones at Holocene) and snagged a little table, and spent most of their set making doodles in my MFNW schedule.

I just saw Oxford Collapse at Holocene a few months ago (with my new favorite band, Frightened Rabbit), and while I tend to avoid writing much about them (the aforementioned Only Person I Knew at being in the band and all), this show, I've gotta say, was a notch or two up from the last. And that one was good, too; this one was just better, and not only because singer Mike Pace kept cracking the crowd up by commenting on the various perks of the festival's corporate sponsorship (something about how drinking from mini-keg shaped cans of Heineken makes you look like a giant). I'm sorry to say I don't have the band's new album yet, so I can't tell you what the name of that new song I really liked was, but so long as they play "Please Visit Your National Parks" and that one other song I don't know the name of, I'm happy.

As for Bodies of Water, the less said, the better. I'm not proud of my bitchy judgmental side, but frankly, the chances of me liking a band in which one of the members is wearing a full-body leotard are pretty small. They weren't terrible; they just weren't my thing. Plus, it was more fun to stand in the hallway, catching up with my friend and watching various people (from a guy with a book-related website to two busty blondes) come to talk to him about how much they liked Oxford Collapse's set. There was a fair amount of kicking each other every time a member of Sleater-Kinney walked by, also. (Two outta three, if you're curious.)

Eugene shout-out moment: Former Horsehead bartender Kris Clouse turned up. Hi, Kris!

Starfucker was cool, but seemed to go by awfully quickly. I felt like I never quite got a sense of what they were doing. In retrospect, this could have had something to do with my being chatty instead of paying attention. Sorry, fellas; I liked your band, I just need to go back and actually listen.

Deerhunter, on the other hand, provided one of those moments when you see a band and are half overwhelmed and half entranced, half thinking about how you want to listen to them again at a lower volume so you can think straight and half incapable of thought. In short, it was fucking loud. I'm listening to them via MySpace right now and it's not even beginning to approximate the sensation of leaning my head against the wall and feeling my brain rattle.

Photo by Jeff Walls. I should point out that he had a crazy flash; it was super-dark in there!

They're also quite funny, these folks, and watching various members of other bands stand to the side of the stage, engrossed, was an added level of entertainment. (Also entertaining: Holocene's hyperactive, totally funny soundwoman, whose energy levels I seriously envy.) There was a whole thing with the bassist being a shapeshifter, the possibiltiy of puking, a Q&A session somewhat inspired by/in rebuke to a Q&A Crispin Glover had about a movie he made ... yeah, it was complicated. And awesome. And loud. And shoegazery — a My Bloody Valentine comparison was made, but I think it involved extra decibels — and assaultive and kind of intense. I kept being reminded of seeing Mogwai; if you're not up for what you're in for, you aren't going to like it.

I liked it. I also liked stealing a seat in Holocene's weird little side-of-stage nook and finally getting off my feet for the first time in hours, and enjoying corporate-sponsor-provided beer while trying to have the kind of conversations you have when the band is so loud, you hurt your friends' ears trying to yell loudly enough that they can hear you.

I have high hopes for tonight: Britt Daniel! Jaguar Love! TV on the Radio! Fuck yeah! But first: shoe shopping and, er, failing to resist the urge to go buy Deerhunter and Oxford Collapse records. Yep.