28th October 2009

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CMJ Report: Day Three
In Which I Touch Duchess Says’ Singer’s Butt

Thursday involved a couple of shows.  First, I went down to Piano’s on the Lower East Side.  This was a day show put on by Brooklyn Vegan, featuring a few performers, but I was mainly there for Duchess Says.  For some reason, even though they were the only group I cared about, they didn’t immediately begin when I got there, so I had to sit through a couple of other acts first.  Luckily, they actually ended up pretty solid. Plus, there was free beer, so that helped things along.

Surfer Blood went on as soon as I got there. They were pretty decent, although the name set me up for surf rock, which you’ll not really find with them.  They’re about as close to surf rock as is Wavves, except anything involving Zach Hill gets to do whatever it wants, because he’s probably crazy.  Anyway, Surfer Blood played a shorter pleasant set of upbeat indie pop-rock stuff and one of their members kind of looks like a vampire.

After that was Lovvers, which was closer to the kind of thing I’m usually looking for.  Like the aforementioned Wavves, they have two V’s in their name, so they have to play heavily distorted lo-fi almost-punk songs.  The singer was kind of rude to the audience, and spoke with a Bri’ish accent, but I wasn’t really buying it.  That sounds like what he should’ve been doing (since punks are assholes), but, I dunno… he didn’t really have his heart in it, y’know?  But they played a good set.

After that, shit blew up.  Duchess Says set up, and, even though I was positive they had a female lead singer, the stage was full of dudes, and no ladies in sight.  I was starting to get worried it wasn’t them, and then I saw one of the dudes had a massive overbite, and I knew they had to be French-Canadian.  So it was on.

They played one song instrumental, still no singer on stage.  I was started to get disappointed; I thought this might be one of those bands where the singer just sounds like it should be a lady, but is really a lame guy.  Then I noticed a girl dancing really hard on a member of the crowd who was just standing still, looking forward, completely ignoring her.  This has to be the singer, I thought.  And then she jumped on stage, grabbed the mic, and fucking annihilated.  She spent most of the set off the stage, in the middle of the crowd, jumping around, knocking into people, sitting on the ground, and hugging strangers, heading back to the stage only to play her required keyboard parts.  At one point, she kicked a guy in the face, but I don’t think it was on purpose.  Sorry it’s not more exciting, but this is when I touched her butt.  It was an accident; she fell onto me.  BUT STILL.

Most of the time when she was on stage, her eyes were rolling back into her head, and she was saying weird things about who knows what.  They played every song I was hoping for (that Six Finger Satellite cover is always fuzzy and amped up and exactly what moogs are for), and they nailed everything.  Plus, the bassist looks like Jordan Morris.

After the show, I found the singer, told her how awesome the show was, and she held my hand.  It was a pretty amazing nerd-moment, but I had another show to get to, so I took off.

I headed for the Market Hotel in Williamsburg, to head for the WNYU showcase, with Fluffy Lumbers, Expo 70, Eric Copeland, and Gary War.  I was excited for this - Fluffy Lumbers had had an excellent solo set on Tuesday, and would now be with a full band; Eric Copeland is in Black Dice, which is excellent; and I’d recently picked up Gary War’s latest record and enjoyed it, but…

I’m not sure if it was just the mixing or what, but this ended up being the worst show I’d seen at CMJ.  Everything was overly distorted and too fuzzy, and a lot of it ended up being pretty boring.

Fluffy Lumbers was much more shoegazy with the full band set-up, and they were still good.  So, I don’t want to sling any shit at them.  Because, like I said, it was good.  And, I think, unless it’s not supposed to be shoegaze, the super distortion was probably good for it.

Expo 70 was boring as fuck.  Despite the fact that I gave another noise-group a shitty review a couple of days ago, I don’t dislike noise music.  But honestly, do something different; shit had no contrast.

Eric Copeland was good, but was mixed too loud, and, as a result, clipped all over the place.  I couldn’t really make out what he was doing for a lot of it, because it was maxing out.

And Gary War was difficult to get into, at this point, because the previous mixing was so awful.  The drum machine needed to be turned up, and, I suppose, by this point, I might’ve been noise-d out, because I was ready to take off before the set finished.

Perhaps I was a bit tired as well.  It had been a long day, and, honestly, what would top the nasty set Duchess Says had had earlier that day?  I’m not sure if those had an effect on my opinion of this show, but I was not pleased.

And having to ride the subway back for three hours with a hiccuping retard complaining about everything didn’t make things get any better.

This day peaked too early. But, luckily, CMJ did not.  Check back tomorrow for thoughts on VEGA and Japandroids.  But for now, I’ll see you later.