Concert: Thisquietarmy + Litchens + OM

I'm up in Montreal for the weekend, and I wanted to see a show before I left. It's the Ska festival this weekend, and just walking by a few clubs gave me the willies, so I resolved to see a show...and it turns out OM was playing. On the entire chalkboard of groups coming through that venue (Casa Rosa), there were only two groups I knew, and one of them happened to be playing tonight. So I grabbed a ticket and jumped in.

Let me say that I don't actually know OM. They're on the same label as Joanna Newsom, so I know of OM, and that they've released a new album, and they do some sort of metal-like thing. I got a bit of introduction by getting there at door, and sitting next to the drummer. He was talking about the spiritual influences on the music, and how legitimate what they do is and how sincerely they can call songs "To a Shrinemaiden" and "Flight of the Eagle." I was pretty skeptical of all that, especially when I saw some guy in a Tool hoodie come in. To quote Andy Falkous:

So anyway, we're gonna do this song, and then, rather falsely on our part, we're gonna fuck off through there for up to 45 seconds, depending on the reaction- Just play another song! - Ah, fucking hell man, just let me finish this sentence. I know- just play another one! - I know you've got things to do! You've gotta go home, you've gotta use the word "vexed" inappropriately. That, that comes across, I can see it in your callow eyes. But, but for this moment, I - Just one more song! - I, I realize that, but you're wearing a tool tshirt, so your opinion is invalid...I enjoy Tool as much as anyone who never listens to them does! At the end of the day, they're a bunch of hippies who dress up like the cast of the matrix. And I applaud you, you have the balls to listen to that kind of lackluster music, but I don't, you see. So... - This was my only tshirt, the other one was in the wash! - I know, I know, I can tell. I can tell.

Call it bias, call it a recognizal of the glorious way he deals with hecklers. I've never listened to Tool, sadly, so I can't judge them. Still, I had an expectation for a crazy sort of show. And it was, and I enjoyed the kind of crazyness it was, for the most part. I'll dive in.

thisquietarmy

Both this guy, and the next guy, had the same approach as Grouper, whom I saw a while back: take an electric guitar, sample the fuck out of it, and make interlocking waves of noise and really dense sounscapes. I loved it with Grouper, and I loved it even more here. The guy had a perfect sense of buildup; he started his one 45-minute song going from the 1 to the 5, setting up some other intervals within that as time went on. He made sure to take the time and energy to craft a really good sample, and then a really good riff over it. He would cycle around something, play a slight melody that just fades away under this wall of sound which is seemingly static, but then changes and grows, in both volume and complexity. It was so organic at its core, though. Very simply played and stated. When he put drums in for his climax parts, they were always very simple, often sparse lines with only kick and snare, but they were just perfect. Somehow, it was much easier for me to get lost in the sound. It helped that he had a video accompaniment, a genius cinema project that really, really drew me in; all sorts of overexposed, fleeting figures among a grey and white background, raindrops falling upwards, two scenes rendered very close together but offset randomly...that kind of stuff. Very artful, very direct. I could tell the guy wasn't just feeling it (though he clearly was), but he was thinking about where he would go next. It started to drag towards the end, but to be honest the opener was the highlight of the night for me. Very, very, very good stuff.

Litchens

This guy was actually the keyboardist / backup guitarist / backup vocalist / tambourinist for OM, but I loved him much better on his own. He didn't use the guitar as well as thisquietarmy, and the parts tended to just sit there, with the ocasional inspired riff over it. No, what set him miles apart was his ovoice. He has this amazingly fluid, versatile, really high voice that he used to add to so many parts of a song. Most of his earlier samples were chirps and some wailing, but after 15 or so minutes he got to mostly wailing. He was clearly into it, in the most spiritual / physical sense possible, to the point of rolling his eyes and twiching a bit. I loved it, I loved seeing him play with mic spacing, and with the quality of his own voice, as these suddenly epic sample lines washed over me. He would open his mouth as wide as possible, as if to get all of what he had within him out there, but his restraint in his voice was fantastic. His energy and spiritual connection to the music didn't go into volume (Fuck Buttons), but into a heightened sense of place within his lines. Perhaps it was because I was getting tired and had to stand, or perhaps because his guitar lines weren't all that good, that I still rate the opener above him. But he had a fantatic, inspiring act, and it showed me how many things you can do with just your body and a guitar. Fabulous stuff.

OM

So...hippie metal? One bassist, who did all the singing and was generally underwhelming; one crazy fucking music artist who was so into what he was doing that he didn't notice how under-miced he was; and one crazy ass, idiot drummer. Members would occasionally pop offstage for 5,10,15 minutes while the other two droned on. Songs got to the length of 20 -25 minutes of the same damn thing. Meditative my ass, it was an excuse to be proggy and artful and all. They did do the metal part of it really well, and the bassist was good at driving the beat along. I loved listening to the drummer play across lines, and I loved hearing whatever I could from the crazy guy...but in the end, I didn't know what communication there was between them. They added in metal-like energy and took out all the development of sound. Well, not all of the development. They had a few really good cuts in the middle of their set, where the bassist slowly changed what he was doing to compliment the drummer and crazy dude, and those went really well. But then the drummer would jump off the stage, or the bassist would hang back and get a cigarette, or the crazy guy would just be vibing out a little too hard. I dunno. I'm going to listen to them recorded to get a better sense, but I was pretty underwhelmed in parts. The first two acts were much better.