by Alex Danger Stewart
What: The Clams, Abbot Smile, Woo-Man and the Banana, KAM!
When: January 28
Where: Subterranean, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Chicago, IL
Why are you so damn slow? It’s a complicated answer. Also I had school work and a surprisingly socially active weekend. Get off my back.
I’m not entirely sure of what today’s date (The 5th maybe) is but I went to a very good show last week. Desperate to avoid my RA’s attempts to force socializations, I made my way up to the scenic Wicker Park neighborhood for a night of local rock. I didn’t go completely blank and uninformed. I’ve seen The Clams once before at CJ’s Lounge in Rockford and I’ve enjoyed Clams guitarist/bassist Brett Daniels many times in his other (ed note: former band) band, White Moose. Once I arrived I was slightly disappointed to find that the Clams were headlining. It’s not that I don’t like hearing new bands or wasn’t willing to wait around for the Clams to play (I had already shelled out $8 at the door. Get it? Shelled? Clams? Oh my). But I don’t really like new things. If I could, I would see the bands that I like play exclusively with each other all of the time. Plus I wasn’t really in the mood for Psych-Pop. Since I started going to school here last August almost every new Chicago band I’ve seen has drawn from the same tradition of garagey, reverb drenched, fuzzed out, shoe gazey pop. It’s as if a whole generation of bands (and by that I mean like 20 people) all bought the Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy and the Nuggets box set and decided to start bands. Not that I’m complaining. I love both of those releases and prefer the previous adjectives to most others. But sometimes I’d like to hear some variety.
Abott Smile
That tidy segue leads me to Abbot Smile. Though they certainly mine a bit of retro territory (Silver Jews count as throwback sound, right? They were in the past) it is in more of the lofi variety. Awesome, right? Right! I didn’t think the words, “jangle,” or, “ethereal,” once during the set. That is a bit of a relief because those two words have been popping up all too often in these reviews. I left the set with strong thoughts of the aforementioned Silver Jews, as well as Broken Social Scene, Pavement, and Doug Martsch’s voice (not so much the rest of Built to Spill on the instrumentation front). This is a band to watch. http://www.myspace.com/abbottsmile
Woo-Man and the Banana. Say it out loud. This duo apparently plays every gig dressed in a dress and a banana costume? Get it now? The gimmick seems a little trite at first, but once you see the guitarist lurching around the stage in an Edie Sedgwick getup like some disturbed late era Mansonite, it totally works. I learned from a friend of the band that WMATB are originally from Akron, Ohio. This makes perfect sense as their sound holds a lot in common with fellow Akronians (Akronites?) The Black Keys. The songs are short, bluesy, dirty, and barely hang together until they come to a lurching halt. This is to say they’re incredibly fun. In addition to the strong debt to The Black Keys, Woo-Man and the Banana also gave of an Abe Vigoda vibe in their sometimes surfy guitars and the sudden stops and starts of the drums. http://www.myspace.com/abigbomb
[quote]There are a few things that really piss me off when I see a band.[/quote] None are more prominent than bands having really expensive gear that is put to poor use, and generally being top rate douche bags. What more needs to be said about KAM? I’m not going to waste any more words than I have to on their sound. Imagine the Gin Blossoms if the Gin Blossoms wrote really shitty songs (or shittier, if you’ve never found yourself singing along to Hey Jealousy). The band name was apparently chose because the members’ names are Kurt, Aaron (or Adam. Who cares?), and Mark. This does a surprisingly good job of illustrating their level of creativity. As it always seems to happen, KAM brought the crowd. I’m not sure what was worse, the bass player’s incessant mugging and pointing to friends in the audience or this quote from the guitarist/singer as he was tuning, “I made the mistake of putting on new strings today. Well, I had an intern do it for me. But I used to be that intern!” Fuck this band.
The Clams
The Clams sound like the kind of band that your record collecting friend wishes he was in. Their list of influences on Myspace is about 350 words long, but it’s entirely justified in the context of their sound. Although it can certainly be described similarly to the psychedelia that I was previously complaining about, it is done with a self awareness that borders on the post-modern and an expertise that makes them very unique. Also helping is the fact that their droning aspects are not soft and floaty. This is Drone with a capital D. The kind of Boris Drone that you can feel. The combination of Fender Bassman amps and Russian Big Muffs hits you in the gut and washes over everything in waves of power. I like the Clams. http://www.myspace.com/theclamsjam
I do have one complaint about the night, overall. The sound guy at Subterranean is not very good. I understand that there are challenges to running good sound in a long narrow room, but he needs to step up his game. When you’re surrounded by the kind of real estate that SubT is, it shouldn’t be asking too much to hear more snare definition and an overall less muddled mix.
