The Ex & Brass Unbound (The Swyves)
Lee's Palace. Wednesday, May 18, 2011.
There were looming dark clouds over the Annex, but it wasn't quite raining out as I made my way into Lee's. There was a slightly unusual vibe in the room, as it had been taken over for the night by the Music Gallery, creating an unusual hybrid environment. Which meant, to the good, that a recording of the Ethio T.O show was playing in the background as the crowd filed in — but also, to the bad, Lee's was smelling extra skanky, as if someone had poured a few beers on the floor before closing the night before and left them to maltify the air.
And in curated MG fashion, Johnny Dovercourt was on hand to introduce the evening, alongside Rough Idea co-presenter Ron Gaskin. Looking around me, I figured it might have been through his influence that it looked like more of a jazz crowd than what you might expect to see at Lee's — which fit well with the openers.
Although I had never seen The Swyves1 play before, I was certainly familiar with the component parts. In one sense, it's a bit of a roles-reversed version of Canaille, who I've seen a lot, as both bands feature Jay Hay and Jeremy Strachan up front on reeds. In this case, though, the band is Hay's creature and a vehicle for his compositions, which gives the band a very different sound. They were joined by Dan Gaucher (also of Canaille) on drums and Aaron Lumley on double bass.
Hay handled all the horn parts on the band's self-titled album, which intercuts its free-range hard-bop with some more textured sound compositions. Live, though, the band was more solidly just grooving, getting right into it with "Please Put On the Kitchen Mittens" galloping off like Ornette before the more restrained "Sleeping Giant". Hay and Strachan switched off on baritone, and generally there was no shortage of bottom-end action going on in tracks like "Radius". There was also a nicely balanced attack from all members: Lumley played with a lot of physicality, sometimes strumming more than plucking at his strings, like he was looking forward to the headliners and about to reach for some power chords. There was also some good hard hittin' from Gaucher on closer "Cross-Eyed".
The Swyves' lively combination of situatedness in tradition with forward-looking striving to overcome the pains of in-der-Welt-sein is in the best jazz tradition, but like a lot of the other bands you can see these guys working on, genre imposes a false limit to their appeal. I'm glad they were on this bill; they deserve to be heard by punks, noise-heads, pop fans and indie kids.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
The sound-world of long-running Dutch band The Ex is so expansive that "punk" is wholly inadequate as a musical descriptor. But in terms of ethos and independent spirit, they certainly represent a model that any punks worth their salt could emulate. Their lengthy discography contains more collaborative albums than those by the group on their own, and the numerous paths those collaborations have explored have helped to keep the band constantly striving and exploring in new directions.
The last time they were in town it was as part of an extended group playing behind Ethiopian saxophone legend Getatchew Mekuria, and the spirit of that was certainly being maintained in this recombination of The Ex & Brass Unbound. As the name suggests, this was indeed a hybrid creature, with the four-piece core band augmented by an international four-piece horn section with dual saxes, trombone and trumpet. I recognized reedsmen Ken Vandermark and Mats Gustafsson; they were joined by Wolter Wierbos as well as Roy Paci, who had played the trumpet parts on the band's recent Catch My Shoe.
Watching The Ex play live is a life-affirming joy, especially in seeing guitarists Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor bouncing around — and nearly off each other — like atoms in an excited state. That happened right off the top, as there was only a quick hello from vocalist/guitarist Arnold de Boer before the band launched into the dual-guitar interplay, slightly funky backbeat and the subtle hint of a horn line of "Maybe I Was The Pilot", the opening track from the new album.
The extra players stepped forward more on the apocalyptic visions of "Cold Weather is Back", vamping away in alarm as the interlocking guitars were stuck in a sustained tension groove before the horns (who were tackling all of this without charts) ended the song in an extended skronk-off before the guitars picked up the insistent one-note riff of "Double Order", which extends the likembé-inspired guitar tone the band had previously explored, while de Boer pitched in little bloops by dipping the headstock of his guitar down to his keyboard. Unlike that show with Getatchew Mekuria, where I was a bit confused by de Boer's presence, here he felt more familiar and integrated into the band, and with the focus on newer material there was less occasion to think of him as a mere stand-in for founding vocalist G.W. Sok.
After all the joyfully-agitated energy, there was a bit of a rest with drummer Katherina Bornefeld coming up front to sing Hungarian folk tune "Hidegen Fújnak a Szelek". That longtime live staple originated on Scrabbling at the Lock, the band's 1991 collaboration with Tom Cora, which also provided "State of Shock", the setlist's next selection, with the horn section taking the place of Cora's cello.
Touching on the band's African inspirations, they played "Eoleyo", a Mahmoud Ahmed tune that's surely one of the most insidiously catchy songs ever devised. This time 'round it might not quite've reached the heights of when the band played it with Getatchew Mekuria, but it was still pretty great. That was chased with "Lalé Guma", another old Ethiopian number, complete with skronking sax solo from Gustafsson.
As recorded, the songs (especially the material from Catch My Shoe) aren't in a hurry, but live, they were stretched out even more, and the main set went nearly seventy minutes with only ten titles, finishing off with album-closer "24 Problems". The band came back for a massive version of the totally amazing "Theme From Konono" and tried to leave it at that, but the crowd called them back again.
No wonder — this was undoubtedly one of the best shows of the year. Especially in the early-going, it was almost overwhelmingly amazing. Every time I've seen The Ex play, they bring such "thereness", a force that puts you so concretely in the moment that it feels like a soul rejuvenation, and for days afterward I felt like I'd paid a visit to the fountain of youth.
Right after the show I'd posted a song from this set here — and now I've added another one here.
1 Do note that "Swyves" rhymes with "gives", and definitely not with "wives".
2 The band's 2010 album came out on Blocks, which might put them in the presence of that kind of broad musical coalition. There's also a newer bunch of tasty goodness you can check out at their bandcamp.
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