Reunion Summer rolled on unabated this weekend in New York with the first visit from ‘90s notables Polvo in just over a decade. This Chapel Hill, NC outfit garnered a pretty narrow range of sonic comparisons throughout its career–Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr primarily in their earliest years, which was strong and interesting enough to make later material sound “Polvo-esque.” Listening to their hazily complex arrangements on record a good 15 years since their release, you can hear clearly how the band made strides to pull listeners into their own orbit. They were a jam band using more poisonous weapons than any hippies might wield, exploring the notions of bent keys; severe distortion; studio heat; and chiming, chanting, dissonant song structures, all of which maintained a malleable quality rare for the era’s rigid framework for an acceptable indie rock sound.
Having reconvened for a series of All Tomorrow’s Parties dates–and possibly a full-scale reunion as well–Polvo is working its way through a limited set of U.S. dates in 2008, the latest of which went down at the Bowery Ballroom in NYC over the weekend. Who goes to see Polvo in 2008? Men, primarily Caucasians, and from the looks of it, a lot of them were showing the stress of life in their mid-to-late 30s, possibly single and running out of options. Hecklers were met with cold retorts and a somewhat hostile vibe from within the crowd. Here were guys that got pushed around in life a little too much. This show was their vindication for years of thinking they were silently right all along, and there was to be no sharing of personal space with drunken dude-bros who stumbled into the Cat’s Cradle to see these guys play back in the ‘90s and returned for some Carolina pride.
Fortunately for all, Polvo did not disappoint, distending already unorthodox rock arrangements even further out of whack with opener “Thermal Treasure.” Sounding very little like the original song at all, save for some familiar chord changes and Ash Bowie’s elliptical lyrics, this was off-key and rusty, yet cut from an unmistakable internal logic belonging to this band and few others. Displaying a musical connection that quickly jelled back into its own orbit, guitarists Bowie and Steve Brylawski exchanged barbed hooks and harsh, almost rude tones back and forth with one another, anchored down with rhythms that punctuate the riffage by bassist Steve Popson and drummer Brian Quast, the only non-original member of this reunion. As the set progressed, it was as if Polvo was never gone, snapping into form with meandering twin-guitar themes that heaved into a familiar opening: “Tragic Carpet Ride,” “Feather of Forgiveness” and “Title Track” all surged back to life in new ways that suggest wild life behind a set of dead eyes. Slackening down enough to allow Quast to entertain flimsy drum solos might have been taking things a step too far, but Polvo managed to do what reunion casualty Swervedriver could not accomplish: they found an intriguing way to bring out the best in how they play now, rather than deflate studio-tightened songs with low energy and slower tempos.
There are reports of a perilously close call involving Detroit music fans and their hometown darlings, The White Stripes. According to similar stories on both New Music Express and Pitchfork, the crowd attending the Raconteurs show at the Fillmore in Detroit Sunday night chanted “more, more,” trying to coax the band back up onstage for an encore. What they got instead was Meg and Jack White taking up their familiar positions in what at first appeared to be a shocking reunion of the two-piece band who have not played out since Ms. White recused herself from their fall 2007 tour in order to seek treatment for acute anxiety.
With Jack on guitar and Meg seated at the drum kit the crowd trembled in fixated anticipation as Meg lifted her sticks to hit the drums that could have set off a Beatles-level fan frenzy circa-Shea Stadium. But, alas, ‘twas but a cruel tease, as the coquettish skin pounder was apparently taking it a step at a time on her road to recovery and this was but one tiny segment in what might be a long journey back to full blown world-domination touring. Ms. White apparently only “tapped” at a couple of drum heads and then moved aside as the Raconteurs re-took the stage to perform encores.
No word yet as to whether she will be available for extended drum solos on selected Ozzfest dates later this summer.
We live in the era of the band reunion. It’s inescapable at this moment, and has grown in popularity over the past decade, to the point where we should just openly accept that any band we might have loved from the past, living or dead, is likely to start playing shows and recording somewhere near you. Sometimes it’s a cash-in, other times it’s a stab at eradicating mid-life crisis, and even rarer is the opportunity for a band to reconnect on a purely creative level and continue to tell the story, a la Mission of Burma.
That said, nothing could have prepared me for the news I just received, via MySpace: Hackamore Brick is playing a live show in New York City on May 15th. Who is Hackamore Brick, you ask? Merely a footnote to NYC rock ‘n’ roll history, on the influential side, but what a note: their wandering compositions, brusque stylistic shifts and soulful vocals, given the 1970 New York in which they existed so briefly, makes them the very first band to take direct influence from the Velvet Underground. Some of the band’s membership had allegedly met through the foundation of the Venus in Furs Society, the Velvets’ official fan club. They recorded a lone album with Lou Reed’s future producer, Richard Robinson, entitled One Kiss Leads To Another, for the Kama Sutra label back in ’71, followed by a single, both of which vanished without trace upon their release. But those records are beloved by a handful of crate-diggers (myself included–the LP is easily a Top 10 record of all time to my ears), rock historians, and fans of musical surprises from the annals of history. Ranging from heart-felt balladry (“Reachin’”) to radio-ready pop (“I Watched You Rhumba”), from progressive rock wandering (“And I Wonder”) to blistering proto-punk (“Zip Gun Woman”), their recordings are the missing link between the Velvet Underground and Television, groundbreaking rock bands that had no formal connections other than the willingness to deviate from the expected and channel a new breed of rock music. In 1971, such things just weren’t thought of. Time has seen to it that they remain forgotten, aside from the random blog post or bootleg CD.
On Thursday, May 15th, at Bar 169 in Chinatown, a handful of us are going to get to see original members Chick Newman and Tommy Moonlight have one more go at it. I couldn’t even guess as to how this will turn out, but those of us who still care wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Call your acid dealer. This news from the Butthole Surfers’ MySpace page: The band will reunite for a brief stretch of U.S. live dates, to be followed by a European tour. They’ll be playing with a large chunk of the original lineup, with bassist Jeff Pinkus and both King Coffey and Teresa Taylor on drums. (Paul Leary is committed only for the NYC show thus far, but may play other U.S. dates). This is the first time this lineup has played together since 1989. To further weird this out, the band will be joined onstage by the Paul Green School of Rock All-Stars. That’s right: teenage kids live on stage with the Butthole Surfers.
Just let that sink in for a moment. Maybe go back and revisit their live “Blind Eye Sees All” video, and imagine these guys with underage kids at a concert. Times have changed, but let’s hope the Butthole Surfers haven’t. Find out on these dates:
June 24 - Asbury Park, NJ - Asbury Lanes
June 26 - Washington, DC - 9:30 Club
June 27 - Philadelphia, PA - Electric Factory (w/ Sound of Urchin) (part of the Paul Green School of Rock Music Festival - 3 day passes w/ Devo and more available.)
July 29 - New York City - Webster Hall