ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD live at The Webster Underground. Hartford CT. 4.21.12

I’d like to begin this review by offering my sincere congratulations and thanks to all the other great shows I’ve seen this year. Dum Dum Girls, Alcest, Pianos Become The Teeth… you had a good run. Titus Andronicus, it was great seeing you again on Friday. With that having been said, not one of these shows can hold a candle to the one I saw last night. Andrew Jackson Jihad’s performance at The Webster Underground yesterday was simply the most revelatory and thoroughly expressive demonstration of creativity that I’ve seen since Sufjan Stevens’ two night stint at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park last year. 

Although I couldn’t have possibly predicted just how great a show it would be, I had a feeling fairly early on that it would be a good one. I arrived in Hartford early enough to catch some young local punk band who wasn’t listed on the bill, and soon made my way to the front of the venue and met up with some friends of mine whom I had seen the previous night at the Titus Andronicus show. As we waited for the opening act to go on, a touring band by the name of The Treasure Fleet, I spied Andrew Jackson Jihad frontman Sean Bonnette emerging from the backstage room on the other side of the venue. When he caught my eye, Sean cracked a big smile and waved at me, indicating that he remembered me from the time that I interviewed him and bassist Ben Gallaty last September. I remembered asking the two of them during that interview if they would return to Connecticut soon, and realized that they had made good on their promise to come back. I was filled with pride, and I knew that I was in for something special. 

But first, the opening bands: The Treasure Fleet began promptly and played a half hour set, bursting with ebullient energy that almost made their musical aesthetic not seem out of place. With a frontman decked out in facepaint and wearing a big Wayne Coyne smile on his face, The Treasure Fleet delivered a rousing set of guitar-based psychedelic pop, rife with lyrics about doing drugs (one song was unsubtly entitled “High on a Bicycle”) and sunny harmonies. It didn’t exactly fit in with the other two bands, but they didn’t seem to care too much.

Afterwards, the Cali punk band Joyce Manor took the stage, eliciting an impressive response from the crowd within mere seconds of the beginning of their set. They opened with “Beach Community” — one of exactly two songs I wanted to hear them play — and by the halfway point of that song’s <2 minute duration, at least ten people had already stage dove, including myself and a perpetually giddy-looking Greg Horbal of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die. During their set, the audience members (and the band as well) demonstrated a complete lack of regard for human safety, reinforcing my belief that serious Joyce Manor fans are kind of obnoxious. The sheer number of people stagediving during each song even resulted in an altercation between one particularly aggressive fan and a man in a wheel chair, who was sadly forced to move to the back of the venue. Even though it left a sour taste in my mouth, Joyce Manor’s set was certainly enjoyable. Amidst a selection of songs heavy on material from their self-titled album, “Constant Headache” provided a great cathartic release.

Sweaty, battered, and still reeling from the previous night’s show, I was greatly appreciative of the break time after Joyce Manor’s set. Although the string of shows that last night’s was a part of was being billed as a full band tour, Andrew Jackson Jihad gave the audience a much-needed breather by opening their set as an acoustic two piece. The material from their acoustic set was almost entirely culled from the beloved 2007 album People That Can Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World, eliciting singalongs that filled the entire cramped venue to the rafters. Between classics like the opening one-two punch of “Brave as a Noun” and “Survival Song,” and deeper cuts like “Personal Space Invader” and the murder ballad “Bad Bad Things,” Sean Bonnette and Ben Gallaty cracked jokes, gave thanks, and talked about their longstanding history with Connecticut. The communal vibe during those first few songs was beautiful, and for the more restless attendees, the promise of the coming electric release was insatiable. 

Soon, the band began adding more members to their onstage setup, gradually building up to the full band that was promised. Knife Man contributor Preston Bryant joined the duo on banjo for the harrowing “People II: The Reckoning,” and switched between electric guitar and synthesizer for the rest of the set. Soon after Bryant joined the group, none other than Bomb The Music Industry! frontman Jeff Rosenstock showed up, playing synths on “If You Have Love In Your Heart” and delivering a heavy, emotive guitar solo during the orchestral section of Can’t Maintain’s “White Face, Black Eyes” before ducking off to the side to watch the rest of the show.

While Rosenstock exited the stage, the band added a drummer and Bonnette picked up an electric guitar. The energy inside the Webster Underground was almost as palpable as the unbearable heat. After a quick reintroduction, the punk rock portion of the set began, as the invigorated four piece group busted open Knife Man’s restless “Gift Of the Magi 2: Return Of The Magi.” In addition to performing their more aggressive electric material the way that it sounds on record, they also took the opportunity to add a different dimension to some of their more traditionally acoustic music, playing sped up electric versions of “You Don’t Deserve Yourself” and “Little Prince (El Principito).” I had resisted stage diving for a while, but once they began to play their self-hate anthem “Heartilation,” I couldn’t resist launching myself into the crowd. A few people got the chance to stagedive during that song before Bonnette kindly asked everybody to not do that. Afterwards, the band played a fast-paced new song that they dedicated to Ryan Gosling (apparently the song is about the movie Half Nelson) and brought out Joyce Manor’s Barry Johnson to sing on a deep cut called “Hate And Kill.”

The latter portion of the set was loaded with material from Knife Man, my 7th favorite album of 2011. In addition to the aforementioned “Magi,” the group also played their long distance relationship song “Distance” (which used to resonate with me pretty deeply), as well as their country rock jam “Sad Songs” and “Hate, Rain On Me,” my second favorite track on the record. It was a great validation of all the time I spent listening to that record last year, and it was wonderful to hear all those songs so fully realized in the live full band context; however, the best moment of the show didn’t come until the very end. I had been preparing myself to hear the Knife Man closer “Big Bird” live ever since I heard about Andrew Jackson Jihad doing this full band tour, but nothing I could have done would have ever truly prepared me to hear that song being played in front of me. In order to match the level of grandeur achieved by the studio recording, the band brought out two additional members to supplement their lineup even more, and Bonnette ditched his guitar to focus only on the song’s demanding vocal part. As I stood there in the front row, listening intently as Bonnette laid out his deepest fears for everyone to hear, I was overcome with emotion and arrested by the song’s sheer resonance. When Bonnette kneeled into the crowd and offered me the mic to sing along with him, I almost couldn’t do it. As he stood there, literally bowled over and forced to his knees by the power of his own music, I felt connected to him in a way that I had never felt connected to anyone before. Connections like that never go away, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way I felt just then, witnessing one of my favorite songs ever come to life.

10/10

Andrew Jackson Jihad Setlist - 4/21/12

• 1. ”Brave As A Noun”
• 2. “Survival Song”
• 3. “People II 2: Still Peoplin’”
• 4. “Personal Space Invader”
• 5. “Bad Bad Things”
• 6. “People II: The Reckoning”
• 7. “If You Have Love In Your Heart” (featuring Jeff Rosenstock)
• 8. “Fucc The Devil”
• 9. “White Face, Black Eyes” (featuring Jeff Rosenstock)
• 10. “Gift Of The Magi 2: Return Of The Magi”
• 11. “Distance”
• 12. “You Don’t Deserve Yourself”
• 13. “Heartilation”
• 14. “Sad Songs (Intermission)”
• 15. “Hate, Rain On Me”
• 16. “Inner City Basehead History Teacher” (NEW SONG)
• 17. “Hate And Kill” (featuring Barry Johnson)
• 18. “Little Prince (El Principito)”
• 19. “Big Bird”

Label To Watch: Broken World Media

In this era of internet ease and DIY attitude, it seems like everybody is starting their own record label. Thanks to sites like bandcamp, bigcartel, and tumblr, independent labels can now reach farther than ever, and I certainly don’t blame motivated people for attempting to start their own these days. Among the recent outcropping of new label startups comes one of the most promising: A Connecticut based indie label called Broken World Media.

Broken World Media was founded this year by Derrick Shanholtzer of The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, a Willimantic, CT based atmospheric emo group that has risen to great success in the past two years. As part of their first series of releases, Broken World Media has released the debut EP from Shanholtzer’s One Hundred Year Ocean project, and they are planning to release a 3rd pressing of TWIABP’s modern classic Formlessness EP on cassette. Check out their “Releases” list for more information on upcoming pressings.

As a way of introducing themselves to the world, Broken World Media has issued a new Spring Sampler, featuring music from a number of bands that the label plans to release music by in the near future. Among these bands are the two previously mentioned groups, in addition New Jersey’s beloved goofballs Dads, New Hampshire’s Deer Leap (with whom TWIABP released an amazing split 12” last year), and the West Virginia-based enigmatic songwriter David Bello. Check out the artwork and tracklist for that sampler below, and download it for free HERE from their bandcamp page. 

• 1. Spirit Night - “Kerouac”
• 2. Fat History Month - “Old Lady Smokers”
• 3. Lion Cub - “Better”
• 4. Dads - “New Pantera”
• 5. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - “Bread For Brett”
• 6. David Bello and His God-Given Right - “Pull Yr Pigtails”
• 7. Osier Bed - “Dooming”
• 8. One Hundred Year Ocean - “1576”
• 9. Spirit Night - “The Last Time”
• 10. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - “Gordon Paul”
• 11. Fat History Month - “Nature”
• 12. Deer Leap - “Coffee and Keys”

//DOWNLOAD//

As this sampler indicates, this label is definitely worth keeping an eye on in the coming months. Check them out now on tumblr, bigcartel, and bandcamp to keep in touch.

5 Things I Learned About Metal From Alcest live w/ Vaura & De Omega

Two nights ago I saw the French black metal band Alcest perform live in New Haven, Connecticut as part of their tour with Vaura. Connecticut’s own De Omega opened as well. I don’t usually attend metal shows, and even though Alcest isn’t what some might consider a ‘traditional’ metal band, it was nonetheless a unique experience. Here’s what I learned.

1. Metal is hard to play. Really, really hard. 

Perhaps this was something that I already knew to be true in some capacity, but I didn’t really grasp just how technically challenging it is to play music of this genre. From the moment that the opening act De Omega began to play, my eyes affixed their gaze upon the guitarist’s fingers, watching them as they flitted about the neck with tenacious speed and dexterity. Although he flubbed a few notes here and there during the set, it was particularly impressive because of his ability to create such overpowering melodic sounds within just a three piece band. Both Vaura and Alcest demonstrated incredible technical precision and skill as well, but with significantly more members. I actually used to deride a lot of metal for being needlessly technical — to the point that the emotion behind the music was lost. However, the show on Sunday night showed me that technical skill can be melded with genuine emotion to produce moving, soulful music. 

2. Metal fans get really specific about sub-genre names for a reason.

Death metal, thrash metal, black metal, progressive metal… What’s the difference? I used to think that all the specificity regarding sub-grenres within the metal community was a little ridiculous, even though I hadn’t actually listened to very much metal. Now, after seeing this show, I think I’m starting to get a bigger grasp on just how diverse metal is, and how much of an umbrella term the word itself is. Most of the metal that I’ve been exploring recently can be categorized as black metal, but even within that subset I’m finding an incredible amount of diversity. Between Alcest and Deafheaven, two bands who toured together in the weeks leading up to this show, there is not much detectable musical or vocal similarity, despite them both falling under the “black metal” tag. I’m sure it will still be fun to poke fun at metal kids for getting all serious about their genre tags, but at least I understand why they do it now. 

3. Metal guys are just regular people. 

I’m not sure what I expected them to be like, but it turns out that metal fans and metal musicians are pretty normal in person. Despite their foreboding, anthemic instrumental music and Medieval-looking facial hair, the members of De Omega seemed like affable, happy people. With the exception of the headbanging, long-haired lead guitarist, the members of Vaura all looked and acted practically like indie rockers, which might have been a little more predictable since their music was clearly experimental and influenced greatly by post-rock. When his band took the stage at the end, Alcest mastermind Neige was affable and even shyly sweet, thanking the crowd for coming out and expressing his happiness that the crowd was so large. It wasn’t particularly packed at Lilly’s Pad that night, but he seemed genuinely sincere, probably due to the fact that since Alcest is from France, he doesn’t necessarily expect foreign crowds to turn out.

After the show, a couple of fans were chatting with Alcest’s drummer and lead guitarists, talking about upcoming tourdates, records, and the various metal scenes in France and the United States. It was a remarkably human interaction that revealed a lot to me as an outsider about what the metal community is like. To be honest, these guys actually seemed a little more human than the punk kids I’m used to hanging around. Ha!

4. Metal can be beautiful just as much as it can be ugly. 

One of the things that attracted me to Alcest in the first place was how little their music sounded like my preconceived notions of metal music. It was melodic, fluid, and lush, and although it was certainly heavy, that heaviness manifested itself as a dense sonic wave of guitars and drumbeats, much like the most cathartic moments of a post-rock crescendo, but sustained over multiple minutes. When I first listened to Alcest’s recorded material I was just focusing on what I was familiar with, the musical textures and the organic song structures, but after the show on Sunday, I realize that there is a lot more depth to their music and to metal in general. One of the things that particularly struck me about the show was how all three bands but especially Alcest managed to create a sonic dichotomy with their music between beauty and ugliness, and how the lines between the two seemed to blur with each passing song. It was as thought I could feel my preconceptions being torn down, with each successive blast beat and burst of Neige’s effects-laden Jazzmaster. Neige didn’t even raise his voice out of his wispy melodic register until at least 20 minutes into the show, but once that searing scream hit, the contrast between the symphonic instrumentation and his cord-shredding vocals produced a powerful emotional reaction within me. It was at once beautiful and ugly, in the best sense of each word. 

….Which brings me to my last and most important realization, which is that:

5. Metal can be really, truly great. 

There was a time not so long ago when I didn’t even think that metal could be good. Ironically, I was probably listening to a lot of Wavves at the time. Since then, I’ve educated myself a fair bit and learned what some different kinds of metal are really about, and found some bands that I really like. Up until the show on Sunday, however, I could never feel confident in saying that I loved any particular metal bands. This show proved to me that metal could astound me, excite me, and entertain me in a way that I had not previously been entertained. From the swelling instrumental works of De Omega, to the experimental, aggressive atmospheres of Vaura, to Alcest’s crushing soundscapes, I was consistently overwhelmed and moved throughout the night. More than anything, I felt like I had entered a new world of music that I had always been aware of but had never truly explored. I suppose they don’t call it “transcendental black metal” for nothing…

Whatever that means.

9/10

De Omega

Vaura

Alcest

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View more photos from the show over at the Lewis and his Blog facebook page. 

HOSTAGE CALM live at Point Beach Club House. Milford CT. 3.10.12

Although the Cheap Girls show in New Haven on Thursday may have felt like the start of my spring break at the time, the show I saw last night proved to be the true musical inauguration of my vacation. By the time I arrived at Milford, Connecticut’s Point Beach Club House last night, I felt truly free. Having been let out from school for two weeks as of Friday, and having taken the SATs just a few hours before, I was ready to kick back with some of my best friends in the Connecticut punk scene and enjoy a fun show. Although it didn’t prove to be the somewhat relaxed experience I was prepared for, the show was certainly fun and a generally enjoyable time all around. 

Connecticut locals Baby Grand played first, and although I hadn’t listened to them prior to the show, I found myself immediately enraptured by their music. Their sound itself was great — brooding, slow, and impenetrably dark — but their performance was absolutely revelatory. Their singer (whose name unfortunately escapes me) belted out his moody lyrics with a searingly coarse voice, occasionally while convulsing on the floor of the venue and staring bullets into the back of the room. The lead guitarist was equally powerful; his expansive Les Paul melodies cut through the mix like a knife and soared, evoking the reverb-covered noodlings of Isaac Brock on Modest Mouse’s The Lonesome Crowded West. Never in my extensive history of going to shows has a band that I had not previously listened to blown me away with such intensity. Go to their bandcamp page and listen to their music right now. If there’s any justice in this world, this band should be huge as long as they keep performing like they did last night. 

Needless to say, it was a tough act to follow. The task of playing next fell to Manners, a Connecticut-based hardcore punk band. Thankfully for them, they had an impressive draw last night, and benefited a lot from crowd participation. It makes sense; they make hardcore punk music about living in Connecticut, which is kind of hard to come by for hardcore fans. The kids ate it up, and the room erupted into an explosive mosh scene as soon as the band began playing. Manners’ traditional vocalist wasn’t able to attend the show last night, so the band enlisted one of their friends to handle vocals for them. I’ve never seen them with their actual vocalist, so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but their performance was pretty on-point last night. The fact that it appeared to work so well suggests something about hardcore punk in general; in the live setting, it’s not about the performers or even about the performers themselves as much as it is about the communal experience. To the kids shouting along, it didn’t matter who was singing in front of the mic. The songs spoke for themselves, and I can back that. 

Following the energetic Manners set was a similarly emotive Connecticut band, Night Owls. This band was celebrating the release of their new EP Dearly, produced by Chris Teti, and it was clear that they were excited about it. The singer thanked the crowd profusely throughout the set and continually suggested that we purchase the new album, and genuinely seemed happy about it. I can’t say that I completely shared his sentiments. I haven’t listened to the EP yet, but based on what I heard during their set, I don’t think I’m going to be doing so any time soon. Their music was interesting in that it didn’t really compare to anything I had heard previously, but it seemed too disjointed and stylistically ambiguous to be personally appealing. Their three part combination of post-hardcore screaming, guttural shouts, and more traditional pop-punk singing was really grating to me, and I found myself wanting their set to end pretty quickly. 

Eventually it did, and Boston’s preeminent hardcore group Defeater prepared to play soon afterward. Ever since I first listened to them last year, I have had largely mixed feeling about their music. In some ways (perhaps because of their Boston origins) I lump them in with the kind of bullshit hardcore scene of artists such as Have Heart and Verse (sidenote: fuck Providence). Their fans certainly don’t help dissuade me from making that association — Defeater ostensibly drew a very large number of clearly out of place scenesters to the show last night, which was kind of uncomfortable. Their music isn’t inherently bad, but it just bores me on record; I can only take so many bitter lyrics about abandonment and hate for father figures. Anyway, their performance didn’t completely rectify my opinion of them, but it was better than I expected. The band members were total professionals, and they sounded really tight throughout their lengthy set. Their guitarists were especially locked in with each other. I don’t usually notice that sort of thing, but I did this time.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime (albeit a rather enjoyable lifetime), it was time for Hostage Calm’s set. They were the only band that I was really interested in seeing prior to this show, so I was understandably excited for the set by the time they came on around 9:45. The last time I saw Hostage Calm, they were celebrating the 1-year anniversary of the release of their 2010 self-titled record, and while this show didn’t completely live up to the extravagance of that night, it certainly matched its exuberance. The crowd was as engaged and impassioned as any I have ever seen, and the overall level of joy and emotion of the crowd was matched only by singer Chris Martin himself. That guy must genuinely love his band.

Since this was their first Connecticut show in quite a while, the band had a few tricks in store for the packed house. One great surprise was their performance of “The “M” Word,” a new song that they recorded for the Run For Cover Records compilation Mixed Signals last year. They performed the song at nearly twice its regular speed, crossing the line from power pop to punk and carrying the crowd along with them. Although their stellar 2010 self-titled record was well-represented in their setlist choices last night, the band threw in quite a few older cuts as well. One particular highlight was their inclusion of “Weighed Down,” from their 2007 demo EP, which drove the crowd into quite a frenzy. It was great getting swept up in the action, but it unfortunately did yield some negative consequences. During that song, I either got kicked or punched in the face, and for a few seconds I couldn’t feel anything and my head was spinning rapidly. I also got knocked on the ground at one point and broke the screen of my camera. Nevertheless, I had fun and enjoyed myself throughout. By the end of the set a couple songs later, I was back in the fray, singing along and crowd-surfing to their set closer “War On A Feeling,” my favorite Hostage Calm song ever. 

When I left the Club House last night, wearing my now irreparably stretched-out sweater and covered in sweat, I felt happy, free, and a little beat-up. Spring break was truly underway. But last night’s show was not just the beginning of my vacation; it was also the beginning of a massive, potentially career-making tour for Hostage Calm. No matter what happens, they will always have their roots here in Connecticut, and I can’t think of any better way to send them off than with a show like last night’s.

7/10

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Check out more photos from this show at the Lewis and his Blog facebook page.