Pretty much everything was going to pale in comparison to last
week’s My Bloody Valentine show. (On the cab ride back from the
WaMu Theater the night of MBV, “Imagine” came on the radio, and it just
sounded so silly and slight in comparison.) And not just
music—for at least a day or two afterward, my perception of time
itself felt a bit off (at least that was my excuse for being late to
everything this week), like I was still in that 18 minutes of
atom-splitting noise, like that time was looping still, sustaining
longer than the days after, dwarfing them. It was hard to feel too
impressed by any shows in the week since, although it was no fault of
theirs.
I’m still totally, head-over-heels smitten with Vivian Girls,
who played Neumos on Thursday. It didn’t really matter that the vocals
were so low in the mix that night (maybe that was just at the very foot
of the stage?) or that the band’s set was too short and didn’t include
a cover of Wavves’ “So Bored” (really wanted to see that), because
their songs are just irresistibly dreamy and sweet and ebullient. They
played one or two new songs from a forthcoming album (!), remarkable
for running well over the 3:30 minute mark—they’re not going prog
or anything, but still, relatively epic. They ran offstage, sometimes
while still playing their instruments, to grab a drink in the backstage
area (god, touring bands must think Seattle is fucking retarded;
thanks, WSLCB). They closed their set with their big
instrument-switch-up drone jam. Of course, as drone jams go, I’ve heard
bigger.
Caught Constant Lovers live for the first time on Friday,
opening for the always-impressive Sleepy Eyes of Death. Constant
Lovers frontman Joel Cuplin has maybe picked up a couple things from
his other bands’ frontmen, Jeff Suffering and Spencer Moody, namely the
former’s fire-and-brimstone gesturing (lots of spooky, trembling hands)
and the latter’s wicked howling. The band opened and closed their set
with all four members pounding on percussion, and in between they let
loose a lot of searing guitar feedback and Cuplin’s brooding,
biblically inspired lyrics (references to jawbones and asses, eyes for
eyes, etc.).
Finally, saw Secret Mommy in a basement on Saturday. The
formerly one-man laptop band of Andy Dixon performed as a quintet this
time, performing songs off of recent album Plays, a typically
glitchy production whose sample sources were notably all acoustic
rather than electronic, with live glockenspiel, woodwinds, electric
guitar, and voice, as well as Dixon’s usual software mangling. It was a
fine treatment for the material, equal parts jazzy orchestration and
giddy electronic bounce, and it was so intimate—at a couple
points, all the instrumentation fell away to leave the band singing
harmonies in a cappella—and so opposite of the stadium
rocket-launch of MBV, that I was able to reset my head and fully feel
it. They should come back and do Plays for a larger room
sometime. 
Ladytron / the Faint kicked the paints off this show on so many levels, even in spite of the venue. I love MBV and of course they’ve been so immensely influential that I could never say they’re a worse band just for feeling tired so many years later, but with these two performances held side by side it’s painfully clear that MBV’s hearts just weren’t in it.
I mean, let’s face it – their trademark wall-of-sound, incredible an experience as it may be, is basically a cheap gimmick that unfortunately eclipsed their entire performance. Call me a heretic, but when people walk out of a $40 show with little more to talk about or remember than how loud that last ~20 minutes was, that’s pretty fucking disappointing.
MBV concert was kick ass even without the 18 min. wall of loudness. i don’t give a flyin phuk if its a gimmick or not the entire concert was, from the very first note to the last reverb was amazing. But maybe all the haters out there forgot to “enhance” their experience with a little herb, shrooms, ludes, LSD or some booze. whatever trips your trig.
neil young is still louder.
and better.