That One Noise Pop Show I Went To

By Eva-Marie Hube on March 10, 2013

Warning: this is a crotchety kind of review. It has some positive points but overall, I’m just not amused.

Noise Pop happened just this past week. The six day “festival” that gathers up local bands that are “all the rage” right now, imports some non-local but equally as raging bands and showcases them at venues around town that if put into any other context (say like a Thursday night in October), would cost you half the price (this might be an exaggeration) and cut down on about half the idiocy that is happening in the crowd (this is not an exaggeration).

Can you tell how much I love this event?

For example, I wanted to see Fuzz play at the Knockout last Thursday, but due to the hype and I’m sure, the satisfaction of promoters, the show was sold out by Tuesday. Good news for Ty Segall and Charlie Moonheart, who are both individually and collaboratively amazing musicians who should be playing sold out shows because everyone should see them play. However, what should feel like a local, intimate show (Ty has played six o’clock, early solo shows at the Knockout, with maybe twenty people in attendance and it was fantastic) at a venue that prides itself as a refuge for local and independent talent that is generously  provided to the community for an affordable price, was probably packed with the exact opposite vibe. I wasn’t there, obviously, so who am I to make such far fetched presumptions? I can only base my salty opinion off of a concrete experience and mine just so happened on Saturday night.

My friend currently plays bass for the band SISU, which features members Sandy and Jules from the band Dum Dum Girls. He’s been reminding me since January that I had still never seen him play in this lineup. I agreed to attend and give up a mone- making Saturday night shift if I was put on the list because of my whole principle/ethics blah blah spiel about not paying for Noise Pop shows. I would have payed $8 for the show at the Knockout because that’s somewhat reasonable. $13 at the Brick and Mortar, however, evokes the “I’m being taken advantage of” feeling.

Maybe I’m just a cheapskate. The venue is not one of my preferable destinations for shows but the sound is good and the space is open. Maybe too open. On the downside, the ambiance is stark and the drinks are weak and expensive, which accounted for my three baby bottle of Cazadorez that I snuck in and mixed in the bathroom in between sets. Again, call me a cheapskate, I call it being economical during hard times.

So this is the part where I actually talk about the sets because that was the premise I was aiming for, not just talking shit about Noise Pop. LENZ opened the evening with a mild and bashful homage to the Chameleons, predecessors hailing from the golden age of 80s British post punk. It sounded like they had dreams of owning their sound, but the rude awakening was a performance that lacked innovation, variety, and BALLS. It was a boring set with repetitive melodies that wavered between Smiths like antics including a tinge of a British accent (the band is from Oakland) and trite lyrics to almost Ramones-like pop lyrics. I was confused. Their Facebook bio reads that their influences include bad drugs, and I can see where they got that.
SISU definitely had a Cocteau Twins vibe going on (everything is derivative) but their set actually kept my attention. This might have something to do with my friend on bass who was carrying the set with a strong presence of percussion buried beneath dreamy guitar riffs and  the on-point harmonization delivered by Sandy and Jules. My friend did, however, look like he had stumbled into the wrong set and was just going with it. He was the only one moving on stage not looking like he had gotten baked before the performance. The ambient, lady-fronted ensemble is working for them and they keep it interesting by getting a little dark with it at times, implying at least some complexity.

And then there was Wax Idols. I’m almost hesitant to criticize the band because I’m scared that Heather Fedewa (Fortune) might kick the shit out of me for it, although that might require too much effort when social media bashing might just do the trick. And there’s something to be said about being intimidating. It makes a good front man. And she is that. I certainly don’t have the guts to just not give a fuck. I would like a little more originality and a little less of an attempt at mimicking Siouxsie vocally and Bernard Sumner instrumentally. Her backup band resembled riot grrrl drones, barely even moving and the visual inconsistency of the lineup was reflected within the music, with Fedewa’s erratic guitar strumming ill fitting to the rest of the band that seemed like it was internally trying to accommodate her musical stylings. Thrashing her guitar around paying more attention to what she was aspiring to convey as an image, left the rest of her band in the dust. The drummer kicked ass but perhaps too much ass for this troop.
Alright, DIIV. This is the first one of these bands that I’ve actually seen live before and actually listened to. The songs “Doused” and “How Long Have You Known” immediately drew me in due to their contrast between dense, clean yet dreamy pop guitar hooks dirtied up with reverb and hazy lyrics that echo from one song to the next. The album is a better representation of what the band is trying to set themselves apart from, the washed out ethereal pop sound of Beach Fossils and Wild Nothing. I should have known that this set would be a carbon copy of the last time I saw them play. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I leave halfway through your set to go eat my weight in beef jerky (no joke).

I can sum it up like this: my friend wanted to stay to hear the one DIIV song he liked but couldn’t figure out which one it was. “Maybe it’s this one, maybe it was the last one. I think it’s this one, but I remember it being more aggressive.” At least the singer (Zachary Cole Smith) tried to keep it interesting by putting on a ski mask for part of the set. How innovative.
So yes, I’m bitter. I live in San Francisco and I don’t feel like part taking in the bullshit that is this kind of hoopla. It feels exposed and too well promoted, but that’s my problem. I imagine kids in Austin bitching in the same way about Chaos in Tejas or myself bitching about Fuck Yeah Fest five years ago when I lived in LA. Either way I missed Fuzz and Psychic Ills play, so maybe had that worked out for me I would have had a sweeter disposition for this, but probably not.

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