Your 33 Black Angels (Pow Wows / HotKid)
The Silver Dollar. Saturday, January 29, 2011.
Making for a non-stop day of music, my evening show ended early enough that I could hustle from the Music Gallery to the Silver Dollar in time to catch three jolts of rock'n'roll energy hosted by the always reliable Optical Sounds crew. I'd dug Pow Wows when I'd seen 'em at the Spacemen 3 tribute night, so I was glad to have a chance to see them doing their own thing. Not too surprisingly, their hazy-but-amped-up garage nuggets weren't too far from what I'd seen before. Jazzy Jimenez and Jay Holi traded guitar and bass back and forth, as well as sharing vocals (into a pair of nifty vintage microphones) that whiplashed from slurring to aggressively howled. They also kept things lively on stage while Jay Share-It (guit) and Matthew Michael (drums) kept the songs moving forward.
There were some summer of love harmonies, but the band's outlook wasn't particularly peace and flowers — besides a song about John Wayne Gacy, during "No More Light" Jazzy Jimenez shot off a capgun into the crowd. Then, toward the end of the set, the band handed out a bag of 'em to the audience, asking, "who wants to have a gun fight?"
"Now you guys wait for an appropriate moment to start firing at each other," warned the band, but the snap snap of caps exploding was already drowning him out, and by "Seeing Black" the acrid smell of gun powder filled the air.1 The band closed out the set with a hi-speed lurch through "The Last Time", which could be considered to be a revealing cover choice. Good scrappy fun.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
Headliners Your 33 Black Angels were up from NYC to celebrate Optical Sounds' release of the ace new Songs from the Near Bleak Future. Heading up over the border often necessitates some personnel shifting for the band, and there was a five-man lineup on this night, with three guitars (including vocalist Josh Westfal) plus bass and drums. No keyb this time 'round, so even with five players the sound was stripped down from the more elaborate productions on the album. The band was clearly eager to showcase the new stuff, leading off with the album's first couple songs. Opener "Heart Stone Metal Bone" came complete with an instrumental introduction that at first seemed like a continuation of the soundcheck before it began to cohere and expand.
Celebrating the dark age ahead — or merely the already-prevalent hollowing out of ye olde American Dream — the album reimagines the end times as being something like last call at a particularly dank bar. Actually, the Silver Dollar stood in well for the latter, the floor filled with plenty drunk folk on hand, amiably staggering around and bumping into people — though not being overly aggressive about it — all with the occasional cap gun still popping in the background. The scene at hand actually felt like an apt setting for the narcoleptic Stones-y groove of "The Trouble King".
The band are prodigious writers, and their sets are always forward-looking — a few of the songs from the new album that they'd been playing for awhile (like "A Song About a Car") were already being supplanted — and instead there was one brand new song "from the next one". About the only look over the shoulder came with closer "I Want Something I Can Hold in My Hand" (from '09's Pagan Princess), with Calvin Brown (of Optical Sound brethren The Hoa Hoa's) joining in on some extra guitar action that stretched the song out to the longest thing in the set.
Your 33 Black Angels might feel right at home in a dark bar on Saturday night, but their music is good enough to stand scrutiny in the light of day. Do check out their albums if you get a chance.3
Listen to a track from this set here.
Closing out the night was two-piece rock attack unit HotKid. Singer/guitarist Shiloh Harrison founded the band in Cambridge in '05; drummer Robbie Butcher is a more recent addition. The pair brought a formidable live presence, even taking the trouble to set up a more elaborate lightshow than usual, with long bar-shaped LED's set up on the floor to add some visual flair.
"My number-one pet peeve is when drummers talk," opined Butcher, "but thank-you for sticking around." His presence was definitely one thing that made it worthwhile, given his tendency to play in a full-on limbs-flying style — until he'd freeze in place while waiting for the next song to begin. Included in the package was a pair of pink pants — later on, with self-knowing mocking, he'd ask in his best Spinal Tap accent, "how much more tight could pink pants be? I answer is, 'none more tight'." This would be a theory he'd put to the test later on while climbing on top of his kit toward the end of the set.
Harrison, meanwhile, had one of Pow Wows' cap guns tucked into her cowboy boot — and when, after a few songs, she switched to a Flying V, it felt like the equivalent of le mot juste — this is very much a Flying V kind of band, playing riffy no-bullshit rock. Unsurprisingly, the bottom end was a little thin at times, but otherwise, there was plenty of crunch.
Though mostly sticking with the blazing, rollicking stuff, there were a few departures — one song had a bastard-son-of-country vibe. The music didn't particularly stick in my head after, but it was rather entertaining while it was being delivered.4
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 In my mind I was pretending it was the smell of cordite wafting over the crowd, but that's probably because part of my brain wants to believe I'm a character in an old pulp gumshoe story.
2 Pow Wows will be playing with Bloodshot Bill (and Hellaluya, Odonis Odonis and New/France) at The Academy of Sciences on Saturday, August 20, 2011.
3 The precise date and venue aren't nailed down yet, but expect to see Y33BA make an appearance during the upcoming Optical Sounds weekend-long celebration, August 25-27. Edit: Y33BA are now listed to be playing The Boat on Friday, August 26, 2011. And if you don't already have these dates circled in your calendar, do it now!
4 HotKid would go well with beer, so it sounds like an appearance at Beerfest this Friday (Exhibition Place, August 5, 2011) is a natural pairing. They'll also be playing the next night (Saturday, August 6, 2011) at 36 Chambers. Also, keep an eye out for a new video, which is apparently coming soon.
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