Late Show
The War on Drugs
Porcelain Raft, Arc In Round
Sat, August 20, 2011
Doors: 10:00 pm
Mercury Lounge
New York, NY
$12
Tickets
This event is 21 and over
http://www.mercuryloungenyc.com/event/47397/
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The War on Drugs - (Set time: 11:30 PM)
Philedelphia's the War on Drugs reside at the blurred edges of American music: overexposing studio limitations, piling tape upon tape to maximum density, and then -- with each song -- they pull off the scaffolding to reveal what sticks, keeping only what's absolutely necessary and dig into what sounds like the best kind of fucked up. As on their 2008 debut, Wagonwheel Blues, central member Adam Granduciel takes small moments occurring over multiple tapes and multiple song versions, and puts every last drop of trust in his own keen instinct of momentum.
That's not to overshadow the sharp, personal songwriting at play here. There are certainly cues taken from our very best American bards (Dylan, Petty, Springsteen). Yet, The War on Drugs are wise enough to also implode those cues or send themselves into outer space when the moment calls for it. The driving organ riff that pushes "Baby Missiles," from the band's 2010 epic EP Future Weather, may well be inspired by a fever dream of Springsteen rather than any particular song in his catalogue. And the endless layers of guitar melody and atmospherics of "Comin' Through," also from Future Weather, rather than add weither to the vessell, only work to fill its sails with warmer and warmer winds.
That's not to overshadow the sharp, personal songwriting at play here. There are certainly cues taken from our very best American bards (Dylan, Petty, Springsteen). Yet, The War on Drugs are wise enough to also implode those cues or send themselves into outer space when the moment calls for it. The driving organ riff that pushes "Baby Missiles," from the band's 2010 epic EP Future Weather, may well be inspired by a fever dream of Springsteen rather than any particular song in his catalogue. And the endless layers of guitar melody and atmospherics of "Comin' Through," also from Future Weather, rather than add weither to the vessell, only work to fill its sails with warmer and warmer winds.
Porcelain Raft - (Set time: 10:30 PM)
With all this chat about Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen elsewhere today we thought we were going to OD on testosterone. So much manliness. Of course, there is another male rock'n'roll archetype, and that is the lost boy – Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, characters who were barely there, who made their music then drifted away. Their careers weren't played out, as per Young and Springsteen, as titanic struggles against the forces of oppression, they weren't grizzled survivors, they quietly wrote some songs, found it all too much, and left.
Porcelain Raft is more of a lost boy than a rock man. That word "rock" says it all – you wouldn't necessarily cling to him in a crisis, unless it was an emotional one. Maybe that's why he calls himself that; he might crack, but then again, he might just save your life. His voice is soft, listless, not a roar of defiance but a whisper of regret. He's more in the tradition of the fey indie boy who emerged, at a guess, circa punk or just after, with Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley as the Godfather of this whole new way for male performers to present themselves, Edwyn Collins as the Son, and Morrissey as the Holy Ghost. What those three projected wasn't Bowie-esque glam camp but a sort of sexual indifference, a subversive disdain for all inclinations and orientations. With his placeless wispy lisp, Mauro Remiddi, an Italian living in London who used to be in a band called Sunny Day Sets Fire, sounds too weary and distracted, too enervated and dislocated, to think about anything as earthy as sex. It's a wonder his keyboard gets played or his computer programmed. His focus appears to be trying to stay focused.
His songs, we perhaps should have said earlier, are gorgeous, bleary and blissed-out. They're post-glitch and in the realm of the hauntological, by which we mean they acknowledge developments in technology and production technique since 2000, and have a similar sense of being haunted by pop past as Ariel Pink et al. We could pinpoint any number of tracks (he's only been doing this since the start of the year and already has amassed several EPs worth of material), and suffice to say that fans of dreamy pop ballads with heartbreaking chord changes, given experimental electronic and/or psychedelic treatments learned from everyone from Kevin Shields to Aphex Twin to Vladislav Delay to Fennesz, will love Remiddi and what he does as Porcelain Raft. Just don't expect him to wear a bandana. -- The Guardian
Porcelain Raft is more of a lost boy than a rock man. That word "rock" says it all – you wouldn't necessarily cling to him in a crisis, unless it was an emotional one. Maybe that's why he calls himself that; he might crack, but then again, he might just save your life. His voice is soft, listless, not a roar of defiance but a whisper of regret. He's more in the tradition of the fey indie boy who emerged, at a guess, circa punk or just after, with Buzzcocks' Pete Shelley as the Godfather of this whole new way for male performers to present themselves, Edwyn Collins as the Son, and Morrissey as the Holy Ghost. What those three projected wasn't Bowie-esque glam camp but a sort of sexual indifference, a subversive disdain for all inclinations and orientations. With his placeless wispy lisp, Mauro Remiddi, an Italian living in London who used to be in a band called Sunny Day Sets Fire, sounds too weary and distracted, too enervated and dislocated, to think about anything as earthy as sex. It's a wonder his keyboard gets played or his computer programmed. His focus appears to be trying to stay focused.
His songs, we perhaps should have said earlier, are gorgeous, bleary and blissed-out. They're post-glitch and in the realm of the hauntological, by which we mean they acknowledge developments in technology and production technique since 2000, and have a similar sense of being haunted by pop past as Ariel Pink et al. We could pinpoint any number of tracks (he's only been doing this since the start of the year and already has amassed several EPs worth of material), and suffice to say that fans of dreamy pop ballads with heartbreaking chord changes, given experimental electronic and/or psychedelic treatments learned from everyone from Kevin Shields to Aphex Twin to Vladislav Delay to Fennesz, will love Remiddi and what he does as Porcelain Raft. Just don't expect him to wear a bandana. -- The Guardian
Arc In Round - (Set time: 10:00 PM)
Arc In Round is the band of producer/engineer Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, War on Drugs, Lymbyc Systym), co-songwriter Mikele Edwards, bassist Ian Fraser and drummer Matt Ricchini. Formed in 2009, the band pull from the layered-dissonance and experimentation of Disco Inferno and This Heat, Motorik rhythms of Krautrock pioneers Neu and Can, and the more obvious sonic reference points of My Bloody Valentine, Broadcast and the Swirlies. Live, the band takes pains to bring their layered sound out of the studio and onto the stage for an immersive, crisply executed show. Their recently completed EP, Diagonal Fields features Kurt Vile (Kurt Vile and the Violators, War on Drugs) and Chris Ward of Pattern is Movement. They have also recently completed their eponymous debut LP, with remixes by Benoit Pilouard, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, Nightlands, Pink Skull, Lymbyc Systym and more.
