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When I say Teeth Mountain’s free show on Saturday was like a dream, I don’t mean it in the sense that their sprawling soundscapes transported my consciousness to a spiritual Netherplane or something. No. This show was like a dream because it literally made no fucking sense.
First of all, just picture the local noise-brewers Teeth Mountain airlifted out of their natural venue– some filthy dilapidated warehouse– and dropped into MICA’s BBox, the squeaky clean performance space in the Gateway building on North Ave. Sounds odd, but not altogether unpleasant. Next, try and figure out why the place was at quarter capacity– we’ll call it 45 people– for one of Wham City’s top-tier acts, performing for free, a mere elevator ride down from a hive of art students. Again, strange, but not a tragedy because the people who did show up turned out to be more interesting than the music itself.
At first, Megamartyr’s scatterbrained guitar-and-turntable noise experiments kept everyone standing around like teenagers outside a movie theater. That is, until they sampled a drum loop– not even a great one– and the place suddenly snapped from I’m-bored-standing-here-with-my-beer to aww-fuck-yeah! Clearly, it was just an excuse to dance. But at that point, the drum track HAD helped the noodling guitar and choppy textures congeal into an actual groove. That is, until all of a sudden, Scott Redding opened his mouth. I don’t know what you’d call it– not quite yelling, singing, or rapping– but it’s as if this unexpected burst of energy turned him into a crust-punk Fred Durst with a stomach virus. But I guess the whole rolling-on-the-floor-and-pounding-the-mic-against-his-chest routine shouldn’t have been any surprise, considering what he did during the Janitor set at last summer’s Whartscape. And sure, tonight certainly wasn’t Whartscape, but still, half-assed performance didn’t patch up the obvious fact that Megamartyr suffered from the usual pitfall of (what I presume was) public improvisation– taking an entire set to find two stable minutes.
By the time Philadelphia’s Magnet City Kids came on, people were rolling on the floor, crawling under the stage, break dancing, skateboarding, and stripping down to their boxers and bellyflopping about in rabid hysterics. And honestly, it’s tough to decide whether this distraction from fun but middle-of-the-road drum-driven cute-rock was rude or welcome.
But when the energy ran out, it died permanently, because after Magnet City Kids left, everything reversed.
Teeth Mountain cut the lights, beamed a projector on themselves, and played to a crowd that was now sitting so quietly, they might as well have been watching a campfire crackle. Even weirder, the band announced they’d be playing covers tonight– tributes to classic noise-rock forebears like, you know, “Single Ladies” and “Throw Some Ds On That”– and the sincerity with which they apologized for these covers eating up the majority of their set made everyone wonder if maybe they weren’t joking. To this day, I’m still not sure if they instrumentally reimagined Beyoncé beyond recognition or if I’m just an idiot. But it doesn’t really matter. Whatever they played was what everyone came to see– a glacial, somnolent drone of tribal drumming behind dark, noisy vibration.
After their second song, I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came back, the house lights were up and the show was over. And no, it was a quick bathroom break.
It’s hard to complain, everything being free and all, but getting the plug pulled on one of Baltimore’s most hypnotic live acts before their momentum could reach maximum cathartic effectiveness didn’t feel very good. This feeling, though, I’d say was more like confusion than bitterness. Afterall, why did their openers play longer than their headliner? Who were these openers and why were they so inconsistent? Why did Teeth Mountain play covers? What am I doing at MICA? Who are these people? Why isn’t he wearing any clothes?
It seems funny to question such things when weirdness is what you come to a Wham City show for. But for once, it was the unintentional weirdness— this unexplainable atmospheric discomfort and surreal sense of overall disorganization– that ended up overshadowing some of Wham City’s best and worst attempts at sonic eccentricity. And that’s really saying something.
Teeth Mountain w/ Magnet City Kids and Megamartyr
MICA Black Box Theater
1601 West Mount Royal Avenue
11/07/2009
bad migraine
December 2, 2009 3:16 amnice
December 14, 2009 7:38 pmgood stuff
January 24, 2010 7:07 amVery nice Blog, I will tell my friends about it.
Thanks
January 30, 2010 4:41 am