Concert Review: Muse + Silversun Pickups 3/6

I say there are two paradigms which concerts find themselves in between: physically energized and musically energized.

The musically energized concerts revolve around the emotional arc of the pieces, the dynamic range of the songs, the attention to form and detail and control. The participants are seated, and most audience members sit and listen (or stand, even, although that's more uncommon) to the conflicts and resolutions presented on stage. They live through it, in it, wrapping their minds notes by note over the conclusions that a piece represents, statements and questions and the eternal striving to express.

The physically energized concerts orbit around the physical involvement from the crowd, the force and frenzied power of the songs, attention to the crowd's energy and how to compliment it, and lots and lots of movement. Standing participants get into moshes of various kinds, or just sway around like some form of lava. If you're far enough into the spirit, you get into a place of ecstasy in the meaning and power behind a single motion, a single gesture to a neighbor. "Just give me a scene where the music is free, and the beer is not the life of the party, and there's no need to shit-talk or impress, 'cause honesty and emotion are not looked down upon." is the ideal.

The Flaming Lips are a perfect example of how fucking magical it is when a band can straddle the two. You can have a heartwrenching version of "Taps" to commemorate the loss of life in Baghdad, to immediately segue into a song about "We got the power now, motherfuckers it's where it belongs." You can start with Race for the Prize, which despite its amazing energy manages to be tacit vocally during its chorus, and follow it with applause-driven, slow-and-plaintive-ballad versions of hit songs. Fucking nuts.

Muse aren't that great. In my opinion their new record sucks more than the rest of their catalog, but if you can get behind the irony of 3 upper-middle-class guys from Devon singing about social unrest and third eyes (especially since concerts are the closest thing we have to a Two-Minute's Hate, festivals a Hate Week, in their power to transport and warp) you can revel in all sorts of very very pure energy. That's just their record that puts them so far in the Physically Energized column, but their live shows play on that tenfold.

Silversun Pickups, who opened, didn't strike me that much. Their drummer was solid in what he could do, and so kept a wonderfully steady backbeat, but I learned how to play those licks, those exact amen-break like riffs, in Freshman year. Because he drummed open-handed, the ride was appropriated to the crash position, and the crash was set up in the ride position...6 feet off the ground. He could reach it, sure, but all it allowed him to do was a few flamboyant stick tricks. Beyond him, the keyboard player was good when I could hear him, which was never. I liked the bassist a lot. The guitarist's strum work seemed all-or-nothing: either straight 16ths or sparse hits. Despite all that, they had a very sincere and grateful bent on stage, and so they did their job and played their set and got off. That feeling was helped along a great deal by the lead guitarist, who was swaying his axe back and forth, playing with climax using an echo pedal, and saying "very" about 60 times in "thank you very ... very much" I didn't enjoy their act much, especially when the drummer decided to be the last one to go off, but hell it was fun, and I appreciated them.

As I figure it, the golden age of Muse touring was post- Black Holes and Revelations. They were comfortable enough to reach far back into their catalogue, to start (and NOT end) a show with the bombastic glory of Knights of Cydonia, and then kill everyone with Take a Bow at the end. For a lot of reasons the Resistance album had a large amount of control over the show, which means LESS AWESOME but still cool energy. Setlist from the fanforums:

1. Uprising
2. Resistance
3. New Born
4. Map of the Problematique
5. Supermassive Black Hole
6. Guiding Light
7. Interlude + Hysteria
8. Nishe
9. United States of Eurasia
10. Feeling Good
11. Helsinki Jam
12. Undisclosed Desires
13. Starlight
14. Plug In Baby
15. Time Is Running Out
16. Unnatural Selection
Encore
17. Exogenesis: Symphony Part I (Overture)
18. Stockholm Syndrome
19. Man with a Harmonica intro + Knights of Cydonia

So Resistance tracks make up about 37% of the show, and most of the rest are either greatest stadium hits from a few years back, or instrumental jams from various sources. My main problem with the setlist is the lack of tension. The only song that really held the crowd hostage was the Exogenesis performance, which was brilliantly done...far too late. We were theirs long before that. None of the quieter songs from earlier albums to create tension and release, just BASH BASH BASH loud song loud song loud song. As a crowd we could take it, and we felt well-handled, but they've lost their touch so clear after Black holes and Revelations, to really take us on a journey somewhere...not playing a bunch of songs in an arena.

Not much else, I guess. What a shitty venue, most of all.

Concert Review: Secret Society 2/25

Apparently, buying furniture gives you passes to the Regattabar, one of the best Jazz clubs in Boston...and even more mind-blowingly, tickets there only cost $20. For the kind of shit they got comin' in there...we were looking through acts like Trombone Shorty, and they attract a lot of talent. It's amazingly cheap! But Shorty got canceled, so we decided to go to a different show, that of Secret Society. A very special performance in a lot of ways.

The band themselves is a collective of about 20 people. Pianist, electric/upright bassist, drummer/percussionist, guitarist, 6 horns, 3 trombonists, 6 or 7 reed players, and one conductor. The size was such that may have led, at least slightly, to a big-band style, but instead they functioned as a Jazz orchestra. That's in part because of the composing style which was, obviously, composed; although there were (beautiful) improvisations, most of what occured was heavily scripted intersection of lines. It had to be; that was extraordinarily complex music.

Two songs in common time the entire night, the rest ranging from 7 to 9 to (I think) 19. Ridiculous! And it's not like you could throw the chord sheets in front of the group. What chords? These players were working from full scores, highly impressive oversized tomes, each with heavily dense and contrasting lines. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful music, very raw and well orchestrated, but definitely not typical Jazz fare. It teetered on the edge of musical jargon sometimes: stuff that only musicians could appreciate and had little value as art. But you could get the arc of it.

They add fun bits of history into their work, which are explained by their conductor/composer/"ringleader". A nice discussion on fear and the fate of the inner of Mars' moon (and possible Martian Rings) led to Phobos, whereas a discussion on the most influential secret society led into Jacobin Club. A human rights discussion about unjust and unwarranted detainment resulted in Habeus Corpus, whereas Obsidian Flow was named because... "it sounds cool." Redeye (sleep deprivation), Zeno (Zeno of Elea) and Tranist (Fung Wah buses) all worked in there as well. I have less to say about the tracks themselves, which were long and fascinating and musically brilliant. I guess the group dynamic is more what stuck out at me.

In the first place, the ringleader is a creepy man. Darcy James Argue is sorta hunched over and unkempt with a fire in his eyes. He leads his anecdotes while looking off into the distance, and indulging in awkward tangents. He simply doesn't have the charisma to be a center of the group; yet he is an amazing genius. A couple of friends must've gotten together and started a small collective, which eventually grew into 20. These people are musicians for the sake of their art and the prospect of this amazing art.

The soloists who played (at one point, two at a time) had to work themselves into the grand structure of the ringleader's music, while at the same time playing the role of a contrasting soloist. Players stopped playing, sure...but usually to switch instruments. There was always some line working under, and although the fantastic drummer smoothed the edges and kept the form together, the soloists had an incredibly tough job. That they demonstrated their own genius within and without the genius of the piece amazed me the most. Virtuosic both in technique and in sense of melody.

I don't have a lot more to say about the group, I was kind of tired at the time. In sum: their album is really good.

Oh, and I saw John Pizzarelli play a few days later. What a badass.