Sunset Rubdown + Xiu Xiu // 19 April 2007 // Neumo’s
Because they didn’t have a chance to do it pre-show, Sunset Rubdown spent what seemed like an eternity sound-checking, making sure that the droning drums would sound perfect while the samba played quietly over the house speakers. During this delay, the crowd, mostly congregated in the all-ages cage tonight covering most of the downstairs showroom, grew restless. Who exactly were these people who showed up to a Thursday show to spend much of the break and some of the show shouting song requests and trying to hurry the band along? [Memo to the woman standing directly behind me with her camera poised inches from my eyes: perhaps 25 flash photos of the band would have been enough? The band probably brings along their own lighting for a reason.]
These inconveniences and annoyances were quickly overshadowed by the band. For most of it, Spencer Krug is half-standing, hunched above his keyboards, pounding away at the keys, and singing with halting, confident vulnerability. They introduce a couple new songs to the rotation and the yells of the rowdier members of the audience are briefly appeased when standouts like “Snakes Got A Leg” from Shut Up I Am Dreaming shows up early on the setlist. Between songs, the speakers buzz, but while they’re playing the arrangements are spacious and well balanced. Jordan Robson-Cramer and
Michael Doerksen switch guitar and drumming duties halfway through. Spencer, who is feeling under the weather, doesn’t let illness stand in the way of putting on a good show. Despite the absence of stage lights (they brought their own lamps), there come a point after which he is unable to continue on without donning a sweatband. The yellers in the crowd assure him that it’s a very Capitol Hill fashion statement. They close with “it will be in self-defence”, and I’m pretty sure that Camilla Wynn Ingr plays the xylophone using something that looks a lot like a vibrator.
Because the long sound check put things behind schedule, the midnight five minutes of silence to protest proposed nightlife regulations arrives between sets instead of during them. While it might have been more effective a statement for the lights and sound to cut out in the middle of a song, it was still weird enough to be in the bar with only a safety light on and everyone chattering quietly.
In a way, it probably wouldn’t have been fair to Xiu Xiu to have their momentum derailed. All of the chattering, annoying yelling, and pretty much all other crowd noise disappeared once the Xiu Xiu started. Perhaps stunned and respectful quiet is the only appropriate response to a show that includes songs about all-american topics like sex, cars, and guns; rape; domestic abuse; mentally-handicapped prostitutes; sexual humiliation; and death. Band meetings and setlist planning must be super-fun, no?
As usual, Jamie Stewart taps into a well of emotional catharsis for a jaw-droppingly amazing performance. As large drops of sweat dripped from his face, he led his band through a series of sound experiments, therapeutic aggression, confessions with feathery falsettos, hushed whispers, and full voiced exclamations. At their best, these various sonic textures — the crazy machines with their loopy ambient noises, the attacks on cymbals, the explicit stories to a wheezy harmonium chorus, and drumming coalesce into things that sound like conventional songs. The mix keeps the audience off balance and entranced so that when these (e.g., “Boy Soprano” or “Fabulous Muscles”) come up, there is a sense of collective release, everyone swaying slightly at the sound of the more musical and beat-heavy.
Actual performance aside, the best thing about the night is how after many [greedy] claps and claps for an encore Stewart just comes back out, and rather than playing anything else just waves and says goodnight.
Your bumper asks me, “Have you seen my constitutional rights?”
