On the past two Tuesdays, I went downtown to see music, and each time the band relied on a drum machine to set the rhythms. In the case of the first band, it was both drum and bass that were programmed by computer.
I'm not morally opposed to the concept of backing tracks -- Scott H. Biram did the same thing a few months ago when he performed as a "one-man" band -- or recorded rhythm sections. But it is odd and feels like an ominous trend. You think of the drummer as the engine of a live performance, and it's disconcerting to look around for, you know, Animal behind the kit, only to see a modest laptop flashing its lights and machine-gunning beats like a souped-up metronome.
The first band I saw was Japan's Melt-Banana, now ensconced as a duo -- singer Yasuko "Yako" Onuki and guitarist Ichiro Agata -- emitting a burst of sound and fury for an hour. It is unrelenting noise rock. We last saw them at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe in 2022 and described their technique, involving a handheld MIDI controller, Yako's urgent wailing and Agata's ragged guitar screeches. (We also saw them in Albuquerque way back in 2013.)
Someone recorded last month's show at the Launchpad. Here it is:
And here is Melt-Banana from an Atlanta show in 1996, in their original form, when they were relatively new to the scene and still a quartet of instrument-playing Japanese kids. I had seen them, probably about a year earlier, at Lounge Ax in Chicago, and they were a blast live, all of them just bashing away.
For balance, I checked out a newer band popular with the kids. Every generation gets the Joy Division it deserves, and for 20-somethings, one of those is French Police. They are two guitarists and a bass player shrouded by back-lighting; they have little personality, and one of them mumbles indecipherable lyrics into the microphone. They play ethereal, jangly post-punk electronica-flavored pop, driven by a propulsive drum machine.
With little knowledge of their catalogue, I could not tell their songs apart at their hourlong live show at Sister Bar. But the youngsters could, and they were going wild for this trio. French Police struck me as a sort of New Age New Order, with all the angst bled from music and the vocals merely an afterthought. It is kind of on the Yacht Rock spectrum.
Here is the band's 20-minute AudioTree performance recorded four years ago in Chicago, the band's base. See if you can distinguish between tracks.
BONUS TRACK
Our title track, courtesy of Firehose and drummer George Hurley:
