Guitars
I love guitars. The way they sound, the way they look, the way they feel when strapped onto my body…pretty much everything about guitars. And if they are electric and loud, well all the better! So bliss may be the right word for my mood after seeing two shows two nights in a row both featuring masterful loud electric guitars, distorted, affected, effected, feeding back guitars. By coincidence both shows were at the Independent in SF. By no coincidence I attended each eagerly. Monday was Fucked Up, a hardcore spectacle that I was lucky enough to see from the very front of stage right, directly in front of guitarist (and genius behind the music of the band) Mike Haliechuk, a.k.a “10,000 Marbles”. The details are simple: Orange Rockerverb amp, Gibson Les Paul Studio, a couple a pedals. The results were awesome. It’s not so much that the guy “shreds”, with crazy fast fingering or blistering technical skills. He just sounds great, the riffs are stunning, and every now and then he sort of does in fact shred. Great show with a great energy in the crowd and onstage.
Then the very next night was another, altogether different, guitar experience. Yuck, a twentysomething quartet from England, play a totally tempting blend of grungy, beautiful, heavy, reverb-and-feedback-drenched noise pop. The room was thick medicinal smoke when we walked in 20 minutes after they started (odd showtime had headliners on at 9:30), but still caught several of their best as the set covered almost the entire scope of the self-titled album from Fat Possum Records. Closing the show with the epic “Rubber” was a good representation of why they are so good: drummer with subtle perfect feel (and beats like a machine); hyper-heavy bass strummed chords; and dueling guitar feedback mayhem that I really did not want to end. Add in a vocal track of supreme angst that goes from “should I give in? Should I give in?” to “yes, I give in! Yes, I give in” and slow the drumbeat way down (far slower than the album version), and the resultant sludge is a stunning show closer. So epic no encore was even possible. A quick review of their gear after the lights came up showed both Max Bloom and Daniel Blumberg favor lots of effects pedals, including the MXR Phase 90 (they both had this one), Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, some sort of wah, digital delays, and others by Line6, MXR, Digitech, and others. Daniel’s mahogany finish SG and Max’s yellow Jazzmaster sounded amazing no matter which effects were deployed. There is something intangibly great about this band; a subtlety and simplicity that echoes some of the great indie rock guitar acts of the late 80’s and early 90’s without coming across as derivative.
The show ended so early (10:30!) that we jammed over to Hotel Utah hoping to catch the Fiery Furnaces’ Eleanor Friedberger, doing a solo set to support her new record. Alas, we walked in and the gig had just ended, but it was cool to see Eleanor just hanging out with less than a dozen people in the room, shooting the breeze and having a beer. Nice to see your musical heroes looking so human!
Next on my list: Tapes n Tapes August 26th at (guess) the Independent.
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