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April 19, 2004

Review: Four Tet, Bowery Ballroom, 4/18

It's been a long time since we've seen a show as solid as what we saw last night at The Bowery.

Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs of Admittance, ran through a quick set of solo acoustic workouts. Since this was the solo incarnation of the project, the songs were relatively straightforward, without the varied textures and sonic experimentation which mark Six Organs' recorded output. Nonetheless, you won't hear us complaining. It was also nice to hear more of Chasny's voice than is normally present on his records. The picking was a seamless blend of reverent Fahey-style roots, open-string drones, and plain old freakouts. All in all, the set was short, it was sweet, and we miss it already.

Now, most of the shows we get to see are either run of the mill too-cool-for-school indie whatevers, or relatively staid new music performances. Lucky for us, Boston's Sunburned Hand of the Man are nothing like most of the shows we get to see. Their set was one long, strange trip through each and every dark corner of psychedelia.

Two guitars held down the fort for the entire set, giving the rest of the massive troupe plenty of room to go absolutely insane. All manner of sonic knick-knackery were in effect, from analog tone-generators, to more percussion instruments than we could possibly count, to plenty of things we've just never seen or heard before. By the midpoint of the show, it would have been impossible to pick out individual voices from the mosaic quilt of sound that enveloped the club.

Most inspiring was the overall crescendo of the performance's energy. After starting out with their drum-circle approach to Ege Bamyasi-style kraut-psych, the band embarked on an inexorable progression towards an orgiastic frenzy of noise and screaming. By the end of the set, two-thirds of the band were on their bellies, howling and hitting whatever drum happened to be handy. All the while, percussionist John Moloney wore what used to be an acoustic guitar over his head and gestured furiously, even triumphantly, to the heavens.

Seriously, we mean it when we say that you can't get this anywhere else. Even more importantly, we mean it when we say that you want to get this. If Sunburned is coming to your town, board up your windows on your way out the door, and go see them.

Four Tet was also great, although not too much different from when we saw him last year. We should say that he was a little less clubby and a little more noisy--a change of which we emphatically approve. But look, everybody knows he's great. Rounds was a phenomenal album, and judging by the crowd at the show, a lot of people seem to know that. As such, we're not going to go on too much more about him, since we really just wanted to talk about the first two acts. It should suffice to say that he more than delivered on all promises made by the quality of his records. But, to be perfectly honest, we think his greatest acheivement on this tour was just putting together such an amazing line-up. We can't give him enough credit for that.

We've gone on at some length in the past about how great we think this free-folk business is, but we're going to wax a little more rhapsodic about it now. Seeing bands like Six Organs and Sunburned back to back emphasizes what is so absolutely brilliant about this stuff (and this goes double for those lucky bastards in Philly who get to see Sunburned with Espers tonight): whatever holds all of these bands together is most definitely not a similarity of genre. It's an overwhelming sense of community, and a profound unity of purpose. Even if you can't get into the music (and there's absolutely no reason why you shouldn't), you've really got to appreciate what goes into the making of the movement.

So, yeah. It was a good show.

Posted by matt at April 19, 2004 01:20 PM

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