Diamond Rings (PS I Love You / RatTail)
The Garrison. Tuesday, October 26, 2010.
Having passed some time after the evening's in-store, I thought I was going to be too early on the scene at The Garrison. So I was quite pleasantly surprised as I came in to see RatTail setting up on stage, given how I've enjoyed 'em when our paths had crossed before. Playing to a more robust crowd, singer/guitarist Jasmyn Burke was in a more rambunctious mood than the last time I saw 'em, and bassist Tim Fagan was looking more comfortable with the material. This added up to a more satisfying set overall, even if the band was fighting with the monitors a bit at the start.
Fagan still played a lot of the time with his back to the crowd, and some times even retreated to the far back corner of the stage. He did liven up a sloppy finish to "In Bloom", however, ending the song laying down on the stage. Burke, meanwhile, was somewhere between giddy and tipsy, spitting beer into the crowd at one point and mentioning "We're RatTail!" after nearly every song like it was a protective mantra.
The band is definitely honing in on their sound, based around Burke's jangling guitar and controlled yowl. The thrust of the music is less spiky than when I first heard 'em though the band, it seems, does like countering the hints of pop easiness with tear-it-all-apart recklessness on stage. Still, they brought it together when it counted — there was a very tasty run through "Gas Mask" and "Basic Buildings" was top notch. RatTail continue to evolve and don't seem inclined to settle for easy predictability, which makes for an entertaining time.1
Listen to a track from this set here.
By the time PS I Love You were setting up, it was a fairly packed house, meaning the band was playing to a much larger crowd than the last time I'd seen 'em here. It looks like relentless gigging and an acclaimed debut album have paid off for the band. Benjamin Nelson (drums) and the titular Paul Saulnier (guitar, bass pedals, vox) bring a full-on rock assault, well-suited to a blastingly loud sound system. As they led off with "Meet Me at the Muster Station", like they had at Soundscapes a couple hours before, I smiled, feeling the music rumbling my chest cavity in a way that the store's smaller sound system couldn't handle. This brought the rock.
Being occupied with guitar and bass pedals, Saulnier isn't too showy while he plays and is generally not too chatty between songs. But that melds well with the straightforwardly uncluttered music. The songs are almost uniformly compact — even when Saulnier throws in a ripping solo, several are done in two minutes and some seconds. "CBEZ" stretched out a bit more — like over three minutes — and felt fully-fleshed out. Some might point to Saulnier's unabashed love of solos and big rock dynamics, but at this juncture, there's no Dinosaur Jr.-esque expansion into extended instrumental passages.
The set was building nicely when frequent collaborator Diamond Rings (in white pants, black leather jacket and shades) came out to add vox for "Facelove", once again celebrating the 7" that started things rolling for both these guys, much to the crowd's approval. That felt like the peak of the set, and placing that with a couple songs left to go might have been a tactical mistake, as there was a bit less momentum after that, especially as Saulnier tackled some of the slower sing-speak-y stuff — although I dug early EP track "Subtle and Majestic" pretty well.
Still, the pair managed to go out in a guitar solo blaze of glory on "Butterflies & Boners" to finish the set on a high note. After a half hour that moved by pretty quickly, the band turned the stage over to the headliner.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
I was actually a bit surprised to see PS I Love You breaking down their gear at set's end — I thought we might get another rockin' joint effort like we've seen in the past when the two performers shared a stage. But it looked like that cameo from John O'Regan would be the extent of the collaborations for the night. This would be all O'Regan's show, then, something of a well-deserved victory lap, celebrating the release of his album in front of an amped-up hometown crowd. Celebrating Special Affections felt like a big deal, a genuine capper after watching the project's somewhat-unlikely ascent over the past year and change.
There were some extra rented disco lights on the stage3 and as John O'Regan set up his gear a cheer erupted each time he triggered the dry ice. Once prepared, he left the stage, only to be replaced by alter ego Diamond Rings. With the audience in his hands, he could afford to start the set on the slowed-down side with "Play By Heart" before kicking it up with "On Our Own".
"Is it loud enough out there?" O'Regan asked before launching into "Wait & See". In fact, it was loud as anything I'd heard in The Garrison, the sound system booming like one of the dance clubs that O'Regan talked about aspiring to be played in. "You Oughta Know", conceived in the memory of dancing at home to live-to-air club broadcasts, was introduced with his genuine hope that sometime it might get played on FLOW-FM.
The set was really hitting its stride, and "Something Else" totally brought the house down. O'Regan paused to enjoy a cupcake from his mom before launching into the wonderful "It's Not My Party", whose saturated synths felt powerful enough to knock me over. The main set closed out with "Show Me Your Stuff", but O'Regan returned to attempt something a little different, playing a guitar-only version of "Actually (I Am a Monster Now)", a PS I Love You cover that he'd tried out acoustically at his unplugged library show. And then back to where it all began, the night wrapping up with "All Yr Songs".
What an interesting trip it's been. I left with a feeling of one chapter ending and another beginning. Nothing is certain in these fickle times for music, but I had the notion I might be seeing fewer Diamond Rings shows in the next year than I had in the past one. I could only wish bigger and better things on him of course, even if it means that in another year's time the local show might be in a far less-intimate spot.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 RatTail was a couple shows coming up during CMW: check 'em out March 10 at The Garrison and March 13 at The Horseshoe.
2 PS I Love You will be returning to The Garrison on Thursday, April 7, 2010, at the far end of an American tour and string of upcoming dates at SXSW.
3 This would make for a marked contrast from the show that these two bands had played together at The Garrison a year previously, a celebration of the then-new venue that I didn't make it out to that was noted for the stage being cloaked in near-darkness, the nascent club's lighting system being very much a work-in-progress.
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