by donald dusinberre imartsyfartsy@gmail.com
I went to the show to see Dead Meadow, and I rarely expect much from opening bands, so for me, the word of the evening was vintage. I was prepared to hear certain sounds and feel a certain way about them, and no matter what the opening bands had to offer, their sound would be colored with my expectations.
Luckily, the sounds of Woven Bones and Greenness didn’t throw me completely off the track. Neither sounded anything like Dead Meadow, but both acts gave the audience a comforting blanket of authenticity.
The first act, Woven Bones, was a disarming sight. I guess I expected to hear some stoner rock from five scraggly guys wearing ratty T-shirts. Instead, Woven Bones is just one guy with his electric guitar and nothing else. He sang rather emotionlessly, like Dylan or the Jesus and Mary Chain. His guitar had that wonderful old-style blues tone, maybe like Band of Gypsies, and the contrast between that dimensional guitar sound and the straightforwardness of the lyrical delivery maintained a level of suspense throughout the set. There were so many moments that I could almost hear the rest of a band break into the chorus, but it never came.
Woven Bones played a short set, which is a key to success for an opening band. Unless I’ve been dying to hear a band, I don’t want to listen to your twelve best songs. Play five of them and leave me wanting more. And I do.
Greenness was next, and I almost stepped outside for some fresh air halfway through the first song. They struck me as one of those bands whose amazing musicianship gets in the way of a good song. Sometimes, bands are too focused on their technical prowess and they end up writing complicated compositions that lack emotion and catchiness.
If you’re reading this paragraph, you gave me another chance to say something nice, just as I decided to stay for another Greenness song. I was mistaken in my first impression. Greenness is a masterful trio of instrumentalists who can also blow your mind. A garage-jazz band, maybe, but they were definitely flashing their old-school ID cards.
They set up their instruments on the floor instead of the stage and invited everyone to gather around them. They don’t have a vocalist, and all three members faced each other during their performance. At first, I couldn’t see any of them clearly, but I could hear some crazy sounds that I knew I had to see to believe. I walked around, stood next to the drums and heard them play notes I couldn’t actually see them play, even though I was intently watching. With mathy tempos and distorted fingertaps, their raw energy and enthusiasm was an intoxicating complement to their dizzying skills.
Dead Meadow has a distinctively vintage sound, which is difficult to say without inferring that their sound is a rip-off. They perform exclusively with Orange tube amps and a stripped down, oversized drum kit, all the while borrowing the wandering song structures and floating tones of the long-dead psychedelic era. Though that description sheds no light on what makes them genuine, I’m not willing to give up yet.
When you’re talking about a current band, the word vintage doesn’t immediately conjure thoughts of authenticity or uniqueness, but I think the fact that these guys are current nullifies any claims of imitation. They aren’t a bunch of old hippies trying to reclaim the glory of their youth, they’re young guys with a natural draw to ethereal, pleasing sounds in a rock n roll context. In order to describe them, people use well-known examples, but those examples don’t afford the band adequate description. For instance, Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix are often used to describe Dead Meadow, but these references come with more baggage than fruit.
In conclusion, the only way I can describe them is: 1) Nobody else has yet described them properly, and 2) They’re brilliant.
It’s too bad you missed the show. I know…you were tired…you went to Shangrala the night before…you had to go to early church in the morning. But there aren’t enough really good shows around here to be so soft and finicky. Next time any of these bands play in town, get out and see them. Make it a priority.
Article Published in the 2-21-08 Issue of EU Jacksonville
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