Flowers of Hell (RatTail / Planet Creature)
The Cameron House (backroom). Saturday, April 23, 2011.
For one reason or another, I'd never actually penetrated the Cameron's back room before. it's not really on my usual rotation of hangouts, I guess, so perhaps it's no surprise that it was a lineup outside the venue's usual folksy sweet spot that got me down there. It's actually not a bad space, feeling nicely intimate and with a tiered seating area giving a nice view over people standing in front of the stage. And fake foliage overhead, making the room feel like a humble cousin to the Winter Garden. For added boozy convenience, a bartender was setting up a station with cheap beers in an ice bucket and cheap Jäger shots.
A spare crowd on hand, heavy on various members of the Optical Sounds extended family, gathered 'round as Planet Creature started the night. That it was a little too early for the Saturday night rowdies meant the band didn't have to play over much interfering noise. The mix gave less guitar and more of Kristina Koski's keybs than usual, which gave a different cast to the songs — "Dustbabies" had an interesting icy edge to it. With an onstage vibe akin to friends hanging out, the band also gave off a sense of unconcerned efficiency — not hastening from song to song, just proceeding through the set with professional comfort. It all really came together for a fine closing hat trick with some of the band's newer material, including "To The Derby" and "My Baby".
Listen to a track from this set here.
After a quick turnover, Jasmyn ("don't call me honey, don't call me sweetie") Burke downed a shot of Jäger and stepped onto the stage to lead her trio RatTail into action. Burke is unafraid to use her voice as a rather elastic instrument, sputtering, moaning, and making shrieking little hiccups. It's the most untethered element of the band's sound, which also featured her uncluttered rhythm guitar countered by Tim Fagan's rangy, fuzzy bass, both pushed along with increasing velocities by Jesse Matthews' drums. There was also an engaging mix of sloppy and sincere that feels like, well, real life.
Fagan would be the designated troublemaker for the set, vamping away and enticing Burke into coming up with improvised vocals. And, as usual, Burke paused between several songs to drawl out, "Hi, we're RatTail!" — making it sound as much like a mantra as a declarative statement.
Though all of that might make it sound like the band was merely goofing around, that would miss the fact that this was obviously a fertile creative stretch for the band. They were playing a lot of new material, busily adding more of the songs that would eventually make it onto their album — I think this was the first time I heard "Soon Enough", "Sicko" and "I Swim". And all of that relaxed goofiness ultimately meant that the band was playing with a relaxed warmth and energy.1
Listen to a track from this set here.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the goofing-around scale, nothing connotes serious music more than a rock band tuning up to E, orchestra-style. Though given the large cast that Flowers of Hell brought, it might be useful to make sure everyone's on the same page. The ever-changing lineup was, this time out, ten-members wide — although a couple of those came and went for specific songs.
Still, with double bass, flute and trumpet there was a lot of room for flourishes here, and plenty opportunities for frontman Greg Jarvis to experiment with arrangements and textures. The set would contain mostly covers, as this was apparently a chance to work out the live kinks on some material destined for a covers album.
To that end, Jarvis had some guest vocalists on hand, including Ostrich Tuning's Ami Spears singing lead on "Walk on the Wild Side", recast as a slowed down, violin-led blues dirge. But that seemed lively compared to the awesome drone of "Muchomůrky Bílé" (written by Egon Bondy and Mejla Hlavsaa of the Plastic People of the Universe), which came off a bit like a super-downcast "Pale Blue Eyes". I believe its title is rendered in English as "Destroying Angel", though Jarvis delivered the vocal in the original Czech.
From their own songbook, the band tackled "Sympathy for Vengeance" and an four-minute excerpt from "O", the "synesthesia symphony" which comprised the whole of their last album. Both of those integrated the composed, symphonic elements to the rockband chassis that propelled them along. Those were nestled amongst covers — some more familiar (Dylan, Van Morrison, and, rather intriguingly, Klaatu), and others less so, like Paradise Motel's "Daniel".2
After closing with the Velvets' "Run Run Run", Jarvis admitted they had one more, and the set finished with an extended, Patti Smith-ified "Gloria" with some good violin sawing — just a couple steps away, sorta, from being an Easter gift.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 The band's self-titled full-length is now available, and having perfected these songs and this sound, there's some indications that the band is already shedding this skin and becoming something else entirely.
2 Two of the members of this Australian group used to be in the London incarnation of Flowers of Hell.
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