Concert Review: Flobots (5/25) and other things

Hey! So this show wasn't just Flobots, but I didn't get to catch the openers. I have no experience with the group beyond "Handlebars," and had never been up to Allston, or specifically to Harper's Ferry. It's a beautiful hole-in-the-wall with, yes, cheap beer, which is apparently why a lot of people were there. But the whole setup was casual, with no biggie ticket check even though they were a little on the pricey side ($20?). Dedicated to the band? Maybe 150. But that made it all the so much bigger.

I know shit about Flobots, but that stopped me. Stopped nobody; you could feel people gravitating in off their barstools to be here. Musically I'm into what they do, I guess. Start with: a very tight drummer, who knows when to kick on and kick off, and how to throw in double-time on the snare and hihats to funk up a beat without derailing it. The jittering mass of their songs couldn't have gone along without their bassist, who not only was tight, but creative and clearly into it. The violist did some beautiful work, with her vibrato and attention to tone, but she wasn't always able to get beyond her role and character as "contrast." Especially in a show without horns, you need to find ways to add melody, and she could've been more outgoing and stabilized some of the grooves. The guitarist was a huge geek, but I loved him dearly. Both as frontmen and as skilled musicians, though, the two rappers stole the show.

I think of rap as three things only: rhythm, tone, and beat, in order of importance. I'm going to use Busdriver's solo on Islands' "Where There's a Will, There's a Whalebone" to illustrate what I'm talking about. Rhythm and cadence are just the same as in drumming; I think that any good rap line should be able to double as a snare solo on drums. Finding ways to find those cracks in the song where offbeats, syncopation, or (favorite!) triplet runs push it forward. Here's what I'm talking about, to the right: it holds up on its own, just as music.

The manipulation of those rhythmic elements and motives has to be married to the tools of poetic words: rhymes, masculine and feminine lines, assonance, consonance, all of those simple tools of language. Sounds need to link to other sounds: in rhyme with another, in contrast with a line before it, in a pun that links back to another syllable. You can listen to rap like it's scatting.

I'm worst with the meaning. Even if that "Whalebone" song doesn't really say much that's sensible (or audible), you get the main themes pretty clearly and cleverly: being lost in a swirling realm of media, fame and fantasy, corruption, etc. Good rap can rally even if it's not specific; it can paint a picture through association, not literal words. I'm a sucker for instrumental music, but the power of a Flobots song couldn't be the same with out its lift. Decyphering their lyrics in real time was a treat, "Panacea for the Poison" especially, but everything! "Drop the debt and legalize weed" called to the crowd as much as the music behind it did, and both of them were amazing at all three things.

The two rapper added their interplay to the mix. They pushed each other in their friendly yet intense trading of lines, they spoke together and varied their tone to vaunt the whole song up, they melded their personalities against the characters that every other performer was in and blew it up with a word. Chain reactions across the floor. It was beautiful.

They wanted you to put your hands in the air and you put your hands in the air not because you felt like you had to but because you wanted to because together you could do something really exciting. They gave you messages scaled to a human level: not "overturn the Arizona immigration law now" or "equal rights for people of all sexualities and gender-identities now" or "troops out now", but prayers, wishes, conversations, and questions, meant to open our soul to what really matters: "standing up in a room. that's when change happens. Stand up, stand up, stand up..."