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February 28, 2005
Two Shows: Adelaide on 2/24, Hurtbird on 2/25
HUSTICIOUS:
Two shows. Two nights. Same venue: Berbati's. Could life get any better? Well maybe if I had actually seen both shows in their entirety. Alas, I did not, but saw part of each. Hopefully if I write about each part, the sum will equal one complete Team Tinnitus blog entry.
ADELAIDE'S TOUR KICK-OFF SHOW, 2/24. I walked into Berbati's extremely late, thinking I would be lucky if I caught even the tail end of Adelaide's last Portland performance before embarking on a huge tour around the country. To my surprise the supporting act, Wow and Flutter, hadn't even finished their set. What is the deal with Berbati's and its incredibly late shows? Adelaide didn't even start until after midnight. I hate to be a grandpa, but that seems awfully late to me, particularly on a weeknight. I only mention it because it's a pattern there; Thusday night was a bit extreme, but even so, a night at Berbati's is guranteed to be a late night no matter how you slice it.
So I got to see enough of Wow and Flutter to be glad I missed the rest. It was really, really loud guitar screech, with little to no melody. Not my scene at all, and a bizarre pairing with Adelaide who, as I've written before, play absolutely gorgeous fusions of live and electronic music, with found 16 mm film footage projected onto a screen behind them. They were typically pleasant to listen to tonight, and featured a new lineup of only three, as opposed to the previous lineup of five. Bassist Bob Muscarella has moved to India to study fruit bats, and drummer Mike Bao has left the band, I think to also pursue his course of study, architecture. I'm jealous of them. They each got to go on the first Adelaide tour, last fall, and now are moving on. That's my dream--to go on just one crazy-fun band tour, and then throw in the towel. The new drummer is David Casey, and he's solid. I think the bass lines have been incorporated into the prerecorded element of the show, but they sound as crisp as ever. Casey is a really skilled, spontaneous drummer who added an unpredictable element to a sound that is fairly structured. As three (plus Ryan Jeffery on films), Adelaide is leaner and tougher, though the melodies are as shimmering and elegant as ever. They may be back in a month and a half, or they may just keep on rolling, into Canada, or wherever else the day takes them. Only the Lord knows.
IAN MOORE, LOCH LOMOND, HURTBIRD, 2/25. I was already planning to see this show, but got excited when Ian Moore joined the lineup. Moore's a Seattlite singer/songwriter who writes literate, catchy folk songs and has just an amazing voice. He's kind of intense to watch because he contorts his face and tongue in crazy bouts of melodic passion, but the music is unstoppable. That said, I missed him completely because of my @#(*&ing work, and most of Loch Lomond as well, a quirky four-piece that utilizes accordions, cellos, violins, and just regular old rock instruments. LL is folky, too, but with a more archaic sound, like they're harkening back to the high hills of middle-aged Scotland. Lead singer Ritchie Young's vocals alternate between yodeling mountain man and theatrical whisper. There are richly layered stories of loss and heartbreak in LL's songs, buried in layers of sophisticated orchestration.
Then came Hurtbird, who I tried to watch in its entirety, but failed. This is a group of five white Portland dudes in tight sweaters and t-shirts doing Anticon-style hiphop with intelligent lyrics and arty, tuneless beats. We'll call it "hipster-hop," and though the words were somewhat literate and flowing, and the lead singer/rapper's delivery adequate, it didn't really work. For one thing, the group is doing hiphop with an indie rock mentality--i.e. the mentality that it's cool to just stand there and be completely un-charismatic and let the music be the entertainment. But that's not why we go to shows; if we didn't want some sort of interaction from the artist we would just stay home and listen to their album. It doesn't work in the indie rock world to be standoffish (no matter how many shivering, skinny wannabes think it does), and it works even less well in the hiphop world, a medium designed to get the party started. Hurtbird's frontman did not move one inch aside from occasional fluttery hand gestures that looked like he was making fun of himself, though I don't think he was. the other musicians sat or stood hunched over their instruments, completely ignoring everything but themselves. None of it was unwatchable; it was just so detached and soulless it was hard to feel emotionally invested at all. The most entertaining part was one of the percussionists, this really skinny, tiny blonde-haired kid with a face like a frightened mouse. He would sing backup vocals, and when he did this expression of sheer anxiety would spread across his face, and his neck would tighten with the force of his verbal outpour. My brother said he looked just like the protagonist of Edward Munch's painting "The Scream," and I couldn't have put it better myself. After the 8th song that sounded just like all the rest, we left, looking wistfully at the Souls of Mischief and Gift of Gab posters on our way out, two hiphop acts coming to Berbati's who will flex a little passion and energy.
ICE GORILLA:
Some curly-haired hipster girl replies to my brother’s lack of interest in Hurtbird by telling him, “They’re just white hiphop.” Yes, the members of the band on stage who are feebly trying to bridge the presumed gap between “art” and “hiphop” are all of the Caucasian variety. Yes, the spoken lyrics and drum beat that are barely audible beneath the high-pitched wailings of a band member (I write band member because neither then nor now do I have a monkey’s testicle clue of what this character played) who resembles an Ethiopian version of Edward Munch’s famed “The Scream” painting, could be loosely described as hiphopesque. And yes, the present state of white person rap music is, sadly, lost somewhere between art-trash like this and the legions of clone soldiers who have appeared in the wake of Eminem’s massive success.
But, God help us and the children if fucking Hurtbird is an example of “just white hip-hop.”
I sat through what I thought was three of Hurtbird’s songs at Berbati’s last Friday night (the curly-haired hipster corrected my error by informing me of the indie-rap tendency to “blend” their songs) and left seven dollars poorer with somewhat of a headache.
It isn’t that Hurtbird is necessarily bad. On occasion I found myself nodding along to the boom-bapping of the drum beat. And the chorus-like chanting of some of the lyrics was kind of interesting. It’s just that Hurtbird is completely unoriginal (oh yes, speaking through a CB radio or a bullhorn in rap music is really saying “fuck you” to the norm in rap music) and irritatingly serious about what it is they’re doing.
I take back what I said, they are bad.
I think I counted six different keyboards on stage, one for each band member it seemed, but I was only able to discern one sort of long drawn out electronic drone occasionally broken up by a plinky-plink sounding piano riff. This endless drone, though supposedly equated with “white hip-hop” managed only to fuse the entire show into one mooshy ball of mediocrity.
On a good note my brother said that some of the lyrics “were kind of interesting.” I wouldn’t know; I was so annoyed by the lounge-act hand movements of Hurtbird’s lead singer that I failed to pay attention. Also, I was too busy laughing when ever “Scream-Boy” sang, he just looked so delightfully miserable, I couldn’t help myself.
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Posted by H & IG at February 28, 2005 4:52 PM
