[Houston TX]
They started with a
fast Spanish guitar vibrato/tremolo but all psyched out, which I love – and
then one of the band members screamed from the middle of the audience and they
became kind of an indie pop version of Godspeed You, at least insofar as the
very long talking portion of their music. In reality, they started as a bunch
of hipsters drawing out the start time of their set, milling around, being cool.
Two of them were affable musicheads, but one of them.. oy vey – he had the
worst case of I’m-sure-intentional bedhair I’ve ever seen and he had a squirrel
tail hanging from the butt-crack-line of his pants. The squirrel tail just
didn’t make sense with the rest of his outfit: a pretty standard vintage set of
intellectual hipster clothing. I had the misfortune of standing behind a middle
aged rocker woman & man whom they seemed to know well. The entire band made
their way over one by one to pay their respects. SquirrelTail smacked the ass
of the middle-aged gentleman every time he passed, which would have been fine
except I was convinced he was doing it to get attention. Oh those
attention-getters, how I hate them yet love them. And SquirrelTail spoke with
many pauses, as he considered whether his next words were ironic enough to
utter. Well, SquirrelTail turned out to be a stand-out performer. The other two
band members twitched nervously on the stage (ducking their heads, rubbing
their eyes), while SquirrelTail convulsed and gyrated and generally made a
spectacle of himself. SquirrelTail was entirely consumed by the personas and
words of his music, which is not a bad thing. Eyes uplifted, hands fluttering,
spoken word. I started wondering whether the show was actually performance art rather
than music, and then I worried SquirrelTail couldn’t actually sing, but he
could. And their lyrics were poignant, verging on Bright Eyes but less witty.
They were interesting. But then they were sincere and sweet enough that I
wondered whether they were a Christian band – that’s the sort of fear a few
months of Houston radio stations will put in you. Their sound was very much
Friends of Dean Martinez, The Books,... Even down to some wailing lap steel.
The lap steel player, the shy guy who also played the guitar with pretty gold
plates that made all the psychy noodly noises, was my favorite. Sometimes he
went into that dark spaghetti western sound that I find delicious. A more
rocking song verged on White Rabbits. The band was playing for their record
release, but this in-store version of a record release was an acoustic set with
a limited number of band members. All in all, they were engaging, and reminded
me how rejuvenating weirdness and art can be.
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