We had an especially busy month or so on the concert front. Here are the highlights.
It started with Brooks Nielsen from the Growlers, who appeared at Revel on September 22. There is something about Nielsen, the face and sound of the beach-goth SoCal group that fizzled around the time of COVID, that just fills me with joy. He comes off as a clever, sweet stoner, who also has great taste in music. Each time I saw the Growlers (once in Albuquerque, once at their annual festival in San Pedro) the shows were a little slow out of the gate. But once he and his band hit their stride, a switch goes off, and they can do no wrong.
Nielsen is about as close as Millennials can get to their own Dylan. He's a hipster lounge singer (with his own neon "Brooksy" sign) who knows how to craft a groove to lay over languid lyrics. His latest band featured a ringer of a lead guitarist (who gave off a Flea vibe), which propelled a lot of the songs. Here they are in San Diego playing the sing-along "Love Test":
I caught a book reading by Joe Boyd in support of his latest And the Roots of Rhythm Remain, a world tour of world music. He told bittersweet stories from a historical perspective, most memorably when he traced the origins of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" back to South Africa in the late 1930s and as popularized as "Wemoweh" by the Weavers. It just so happens that Boyd's brother lives in Albuquerque, so a stop here should not have been a surprise. I was drawn to Boyd because of his work with R.E.M. in the mid-'80s. A Harvard grad, he went to England in the 1960s and became synonymous with the British folk scene of Fairport Convention and Nick Drake.
My partner took me to see one of her favorites, Skating Polly, at the Launchpad in late September. Step-siblings Peyton Bighorse and Kelli Mayo, who share vocal duties and switch off between guitar and bass, were "discovered" in Oklahoma by Exene Cervenka of X. They can give off a Throwing Muses vibe with some off-kilter rhythm shifts. They certainly played loud and tore it up before a small crowd. Here they are six years ago in a live set on KEXP:
I bought tickets to see sadgirl Haley Heynderickx, who is doing her part in supporting the consonants at the end of the alphabet, but I just was too busy to run downtown on a Tuesday night. I hope she appreciates my $20 contribution; I'd still like to see her during a calmer period.
Rocktober crescendoed with a trip to Austin. The visit was bookended by concerts from Guided by Voices (at the Mohawk) and Dehd (at the Scoot Inn).
Opening for Dehd was Chicago-based Sweat FM, who has to be seen to be believed. Apparently a guy named Dom Rabalais, who is into bodybuilding, tattoos and a porn side gig, he sings techno-punk songs to a recorded digital backing track. He strips down to barely anything and jumps around the stage, like a kickboxing aerobics instructor who sings his own songs. My favorite outfit was a neon lime-green jock strap. The ladies loved his hydraulic butt cheeks. He ended every song with a verbal stamp: "Sweat FM!" (Like Mary Katherine Gallagher's "Superstar!") Here he is without the peroxide in his hair:
Dehd drew a packed crowd to the outdoor venue on a warm night. They seem a little more confident than when we saw them two years ago in Albuquerque. Jason Balla still stalks the stage while bashing out his spare, loose lead guitar riffs, and Emily Kempf is the anchor on the left side of the stage. Highlights included "Loner" and "Light On"; they are the second and third track on the video below from a recent live KCRW recording. We left at the end of the main set, ceding the encore to the kids to enjoy, as we wandered past the Daniel Johnston tribute mural, getting a jump on traffic, only to have our bus break down and then getting caught in a massive snarl on the UT campus as a Sabrina Carpenter was letting out, unleashing a horde of blond girls in white boots onto the thoroughfare.
We're nearing double digits on our Guided by Voices world tour. Austin was either the 8th or 9th city we've seen the Dayton legends (depending on whether you count Los Angeles and Long Beach separately). God bless Robert Pollard. He refuses to rest on his legacy songs. For better or worse, he leans into his recent catalogue more and more, which made the second hour a bit of a drag at times. (One stretch of 7 out of 8 songs were barely recognizable to me, a diehard since "Bee Thousand.") Pollard is getting more and more judicious with the old favorites, like "Motor Away," "The Best of Jill Hives" and "Shocker in Gloomtown," sprinkling them in almost as teases amid the denser new material.
I didn't stay for the encore (which means I missed one of his best live songs, "Jane of the Waking Universe" ... and, of course, "Echoes Myron") but he finished the main set strong with "I Am a Scientist," "Cut-out Witch" and "Glad Girls," with one new ringer mixed in -- "Serene King," an instant pop classic:
I don't know which one of us is going to fold first -- Bob (who is 67) or me. There were times at the Austin gig where I vowed that it might be my last GBV show -- especially considering it was one of those concerts where Pollard had that chip on his shoulder that comes from not being appreciated as the greatest pop songwriter of his generation, and he wouldn't shut up about it -- but I'll probably end up in a place like Pittsburgh next year pogoing to "Teenage FBI." Never say never.
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