fucking kick ass!
Grass Widow were the shit, mellow but edgy, ambient but with just enough heaviness to appease my more aggressive tastes, a cool pop/street/post-punk sound with an art-rock flavor for jamming breaks and intricacy of guitar/bass work. And those female vocal harmonies between the drummer, bass and guitarist were divine.. the SK ladies always come through with good, hand selected, opening acts..
Wild Flag were delightful, they had a strong and pleasant stage presence, built from all the experience of the artists.. Even though this is a new band having played only a few shows together, they all have a good mutual chemistry not just which each other, but with the crowd full of years long fans. Carrie's songs were great, heavy One Beat style with a bit of the retro/classic rock Woods sound and jamming improves, it was not quite as polished as sleater-kinney, not quite as raw and cutting as Excuse 17, but definitely with more fierceness than the Spells had, and I love this for that. Mary was a bit more timid in her stage presence, pretty much as she has been any of the other times I seen her in the past ten years, but her music was shining, strong, crafted, exactly what to expect from an artist of her caliber and history. They even went on a sonic youth esque turn and at many moments, and Mary especially has a new talent for feedback, noise, no-wave, thrash and experimentation with effects, Carrie we are familiar with this, but them wielding it together, perfection! Janet was amazing as usual, when is she not? The chick from the Minders Rebecca Cole was a solid foundation for driving bass lines on the keys as well as good backing vocals and upbeat dancing. In fact, all the ladies were dancing on stage quite a bit, and that is much more nice than the usual wallflower, stiff as a board stage/crowd presences at art-rock/indy shows, it was like, come on people, its safe to dance you know, and the band showed it! The style of this post-riot grrl era seems to be defined with female vocal harmonies, and Wild Flag nailed it even more so than other groups before them have, we should look forward to at the least a very solid, classic album from this group if not a few years of great shows and albums to come! It was everything I missed from the past five year s-k show hiatus and more!
Janet we love you!
The banter and rapor was fun and sincere..
Carrie had refused a drink that someone in the crowd mistakenly brought her (janet in fact had jokingly ordered a shot of Casadores) which was understandable, not because of her germophobe excuse (though if you know carrie you are aware of her germaphobia) but because I saw her drinking a few mixed drinks during the opening bands, and nobody wants to take a double shot after drinking some drinks before coming on stage and two beers down already during the show!
Further, aside from Mary and Rebecca's dancing, Carrie went a bit wild on the Cobain side, flinging around her guitar and the mic stand all around the crowd, and then getting into a serious iggy pop moment on the encore.. that shit was fucking great! In the SK years Carrie was always rather soft-spoken, kind of shy even on stage, but this wild, punk rock Carrie was refreshingly exciting!
This shit was balls to the wall rock and roll, and there were no balls to speak of! fucking excellent!
from the Spaceland
more from the Spaceland including some serious thrash, no-wave jamming in the middle