Onstage, before a respectable Sunday night crowd for two relatively obscure acts at Chop Suey, Growing’s two guitarists—Joe Denardo and Kevin Doria—flanked newest member, Sadie Laska. The behooded, thin woman sounded like a fat man when she sang-spoke into her mic. This was surprise number one. Surprise number two: Growing’s three members all stood before keyboards/samplers and made sounds that I didn’t expect to hear. What I expected were kosmische drones oscillating to infinity in soothing concentric circles. What Growing produced instead were staccato torrents of heavily treated guitars and somewhat clunky canned (not Can-ny, unfortunately) beats; this was more Excepter than Popol Vuh or Stars of the Lid.

Clearly, some change has been going on in the Growing camp. Everything sounded processed into a strident un-organicness. The second and third tracks were downright extroverted and cheerful, in their way, with the latter delving into the jagged dance-floor grotesquerie of fellow Brooklynites Black Dice. Track five (it was hard to tell where one piece ended and the next began, so I may be off here) sounded like hauntological house music, while the set closer rode rigid midtempo dance beats, looped vocals, and smudged guitar hieroglyphics into strange club territory, before morphing into an anticlimactic, dark gray rumble. This wasn’t the Growing I was anticipating, but I respect their desire to evolve.

Fuck Buttons’ Andrew Hung and Benjamin Power tellingly faced each other onstage. They hunched over their laptops and noisemaking toys in deep concentration, rarely acknowledging the crowd. Their sound may be expansive, but their stage demeanor is insular. Most in the audience didn’t seem to care too much about the lack of communication and eye contact, though. We’ve had enough “How ya doin’, Seattle?”s to last several lifetimes.

Fuck Buttons’ first track, “Surf Solar” from the excellent new Tarot Sport album, swept in on sweeping, Vangelis-sized melodies and massive galloping beats. It recalled the Field, but with a PhD in noise. So far, so exhilarating. The next cut, “Colours Move" off Street Horrrsing, thundered with thick, tribal drums and a momentous buzzing drone that burrowed into brains and enveloped the venue; it was at once comforting and discomfiting. “Okay, Let’s Talk About Magic” flaunted serrated synth tones and distorted squeals over what sounded like pitch-shifted horse hooves. “Phantom Limb” pushed a fucked-up cha-cha rhythm to a sonorous chainsaw symphony.

There are music bands, and then there are lyrics bands, and the Mountain Goats are definitely the latter. Not that the music's not fine—John Darnielle knows how to arrrange some chord changes, and his backing band (including Superchunk/Scharpling& Wurster alum Jon Wurster) are on point, providing foundation and emphasis and never getting in the way—but it's all about the man's words, his impassioned delivery thereof (voice high and straining and thin, head shaking furiously), and, for the super-geeks, his between song dissections of their meanings, origins, and interpretations. You can tell it's a lyrics act because some of the most vocal fans were applauding loudest not for the band istelf or for songs or even choruses, but for individual lines. When Darnielle sang, "Of the several things that you have to do today/You're gonna regret one," on the song "Sign of the Crow (Part 2)," one lone voice in the crowd shouted, "Yeah!" with audible conviction. When Darnielle sang the chorus, "Oh, what do I do/without you," on "Woke Up New," peals of sympathetic howls went through the crowd. These were lyrics people here, and the Mountain Goats have enough super-resonant lyrical moments to keep such folks cheering all night.

About those between song dissections: Darnielle talking about his work was like VH1 Storytellers as Micro Machines commercial, Darnielle all nervous excitement, dropping bon mots waaaay faster than I could possibly jot them all down for posterity. Introducing the oddly upbeat "Romans 10:9," off latest album The Life of the World to Come, Darnielle delivered "an extended bitchy harangue" about how "artists, or pretenders to the title" read too much of their own press, about how he was writing this song depressed in a Denver hotel room, how its about a guy who's about to lose his shit because he's stopped taking his medication, because he's trying, in the parlance of recovery culture, to "fake it until he makes it," and how the press has frequently and mistakenly labeled the song as "hopeful"—I won't lie, I went back through this review right then to make sure I hadn't used that word (I didn't).

Introducing "Orange Ball of Peace," a triumphant-sounding song about arson, Darnielle said, "This is a song about a guy's ambitions—everyone's gotta have dreams, even when those dreams will surely result in damage." Introducing "Thank You Mario but Our Princess is in Another Castle," he did an amazing monologue about the genuine emotional resonance of Super Mario Brothers, explaining the situation with his hands, "the dragon's like this [makes big space with hands] and I'm like this [makes smaller space], and I don't even have the hammer that I had in Donkey Kong...but I defeat the evil dragon, and now I will see the woman that I love and have like 2 second of bliss, but instead it's just this little guy in a funny hat, but you're not mad, because he's your friend." Introducing "Hebrews 11:40" ("whether by faith or by the sword/I'm gonna be restored") he said, "This is a funny way for me to start a sentence, but, not to get too emo with you, this is a song about body image" (sword = plastic surgery?). He went off on other curtain-pulling tangents, talking about chord changes and soundscans, but again I couldn't quite take it all down. At one point, he had the band's bassist introduce a song, and the difference is style—"Um, it starts in C, it's kind of fast"—is the source for some more funny riffing from the frontman.

But as entertaining as the banter was, the songs were just stunning. Darnielle played solo, sitting at the piano, for a few songs. Final Fantasy's Owen Pallet joined him for "1 John 4:16" and "Going to Bristol" and then a couple more with the full band. Highlights included: Darnielle singing "Love Love Love," at a barely audible mumbling whisper, the band holding back, everyone except the inevitable two oblivious jerks in the bar totally hushed and reverent; the totally chilling "Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?" (so many skin-tingling moments a this show); the band's righteously inflamed rendition of "Against Pollution," during which Darnielle ad-libbed a little "yes!" inspired by some response in the audience; and of course the rousing set closer "This Year," for which Darnielle, off the mic, led the crowd in singing the first couple lines.

For their first encore, the band played Life of the World to Come closer "Ezekial 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace" followed by "No Children," which the crowd had been loudly requesting all night. During the latter song, a kid ran onstage from the wings, maybe grabbed something off the bass player's amp, and then jumped into the crowd. Darnielle was thrilled. "Ladies and gentlemen, our first ever stage diver! That's exactly like me at an indie rock show: 'These people don't know how to catch me, I'll just jump onto the floor.'" He went on to say that he thought god sent him to this planet to tell people who haven't moshed to mosh, and that he supported the introduction of a Constitutional amendment protecting the right to mosh. The next song was the awesome "Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," for which Darnielle altered the lyrics to "they moshed twice a week in Jeff's bedroom," and when the crowd dutifully started a funny, slow-motion, swaying side-to-side mosh pit, Darnielle told them, "I am in love with you right now." (It would be impossible to top that with a second encore, but the crowd demanded it, so the band came back out and played "See America Right.")

I don't know why I wasn't expecting an act with an album titled He Poos Clouds to be funny—possibly all the baroque orchestral arrangements and my only passing knowledge of his song catalog got it in my head that this was strictly "serious" music—but Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett was pretty hammy and hilarious. I came into his set late, just in time to catch some joke about hurting his back hauling his piano (a Nord keyboard no bigger than guitar) down four flights of stairs. To introduce his next song, he shouted, "there's download cards in the back..you'll be the first people in the world to hear this song. It's true. Pay attention, because it's gonna get lots of play on your iTunes...or WinAmp—if you're not a fascist!" He introduced the act's last song as "a song by Theodore Adorno called 'Independence is No Solution for Modern Babies.'" There was a lyric about how "babies want to have publicists/because better babies make best-of lists," and the whole songs culminated with the declaration that "babies just wanna dance" followed by a litany of all the Brooklyn neighborhoods they'd wanna dance in (Williamsburg, Green Point, etc). Throughout, Pallet, who had sort of lopsided hair and was wearing what locked like some kind of artful smock, sang in a clear, almost creamy voice and picked out delicate pizzicato melodies and slow-bowed notes on his violin while his accompanist provided little bits of percussion or other additional instrumentation. As Darnielle said of him during their duet later in the night, when noting that he himself could barely play a song's chord changes when he first wrote it, "Now I've got this violinist, he went to school for this sort of thing."

Even in 2009, Devo inspire mad, uh, devotion. The merch booth was mobbed; tons of folks bought the trademark red flowerpot hats, multiple designs of T-shirts, vinyl copies of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo and Freedom of Choice, etc. These Akron, Ohio dance-rock icons also draw a pretty nerdy crowd. Crocodile booker Eli Anderson noticed a similarity between D&D aficionados and Devo fans, and I detected a Star Trek convention vibe in the Moore, which was close to being packed (surprisingly, my row had some empty seats).

Ex-Seattle denizen/currenty New Yorker Reggie Watts was an odd but brave choice to open for Devo. He beatboxed some shit-hot hiphop, soul, funk, and stomping dance tracks that trod a fine line between parody and just outright great party music. Watts is an accomplished comedian as well as a versatile, soulful vocalist, and his absurdist way with Dadaist sound poetry and between-song banter was practically Monty Python-esque—perhaps hitting with more impact because it’s coming from a guy whose afro dwarfs ’70s-era Sly Stone’s ’do. Watts’ devastating de(con)struction of misogynistic, materialistic rap tropes, “Fuck Shit Stack,” was a highlight, and his quasi-serious Voice of God analysis about Devo’s importance resulted in some jaw-dropping improv humor. The digs at industrial-music luminaries KMFDM and Ministry should’ve been stale, but they provoked laughs, largely because hardly anybody really expected those acts to be referenced in 2009.

Watts won over much of the crowd, but a segment of Devo’s fanbase unfortunately suffers from Tourette Syndrome or just plain mental retardation. One balding white guy upfront repeated (and repeated) “Are we not men?!” as if it would get funnier and more endearing with each repetition. It did not. He and other Devo-ted knuckleheads interrupted Watts throughout this performance, impatient for their deities, but Watts let it roll right off him and even slyly sonned them with an extemporaneous putdown of people who shout random things for no good reason.

Devo’s set started with a video projected on a large screen of the band doing “Secret Agent Man” in 1975. Very nice to see footage of the band at this embryonic stage. The vid for “Jocko Homo” followed, and then the original Devo lineup plus drummer Josh Freese came on in yellow hazmat suits to a wild reception. “You all look good in 3-D,” Mark Mothersbaugh announced, acknowledging the band’s glasses. “What you don’t realize, though, is that these are x-ray specs.” We laughed.

I still can’t get my head around Dirty Projectors’ madly growing popularity. Don’t get me wrong: I’m happy a band with such a thorny sound can pack a club like Neumos (I arrived just as the band were walking onstage and instantly hit a solid wall of humanity). But when you break down the group’s component parts, they don’t add up to typical ’00s commercial success (critical plaudits, yes, but those don’t normally lead to rabid, large fan bases).

Led by Dave Longstreth—who strikes me as Generation Y’s David Byrne, right down to the chicken-like head-bobbing and intense, skinny-professor stage demeanor—the New York sextet boast three female singers (Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, Haley Dekle) who “ah” and “oh” with a kind of creamy-white gospel passion, but arranged in rococo, doo-wop configurations. Their and Longstreth’s oft-falsetto’d smart-Caucasian emoting wriggle over quasi-highlife guitar figures and crazily metered, Bill Bruford-esque drumming from Brian Mcomber.

Their songs corkscrew in unexpected directions and defy easy head-nodding, while the melodies similarly move with the unpredictable trajectory of a knuckleball pitch. They often sound like Talking Heads and King Sunny Ade tussling in a Cubist sculpture garden; not exactly a formula for mass popularity, but damn if Dirty Projectors aren’t accruing a steadily growing, seriously receptive audience.

Longstreth came onstage solo to croon while picking left-handed on his right-hander’s guitar (I think the tune was “Like Fake Blood in Crisp October”), a sweet, low-key appetizer before the rest of the band joined him for a sparse, spindly Afropop-inflected piece wherein Dirty Projectors demonstrated their skill for making oblong song structures somehow seem elegant. “No Intention” put forth the group’s trademark halting funk with “Robert Fripp goes to Mali” guitar progressions contrasting with the ultra-white, primly formal vocal gymnastics. “Temecula Sunrise” was all controlled explosions tempered intermittently by a tensely languid lilt (Mcomber was a freakin’ animal on this track).

After a long pause for some guitar restringing, Deradoorian sang the conflicted romantic number “Two Doves” and then Nat Baldwin brought out his standup bass for “Spray Paint (The Walls),” in which they transformed the Black Flag song into a spare, mellow ballad. The one-two-three punch near the end of “Remade Horizon,” “Stillness Is the Move,” and “Useful Chamber” elevated the show to a higher level, with the latter sounding like a lethal combo of “Psycho Killer” and “Take Me to the River,” all stoic menace and exhilarating tension.

The rhythmic and mellifluous “Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie” closed the set proper with its hiccupping Laurie Anderson voxing and roller-coaster dynamics, then Dirty Projectors encored with “Fluorescent Half Dome,” a blue-toned, wistful ballad that made me think of Spain (the band, not the country), something I’ve not done in over a decade. The gig ended with the night’s most splenetic track—“Knotty Pine,” I think, a collab with Byrne from the Dark Was the Night compilation.

This set was enjoyable, but somehow it didn’t seem as celebratory and revelatory as the last one Dirty Projectors did at Chop Suey. This tour seems to be going on forever, and it would be nice to hear some new DP material. Nonetheless, the crowd ate it up. Next stop: the Showbox—or maybe even the Paramount, with the way things are going for this lovably odd band.

Photos by Kristen Blush, more after the jump.

There's really not that much that needs to be said about The Gossip, en generale, at this point. Detractors of the band are few; general consensus is that they fucking rock, and if you don't like them, they don't care. "The Gossip will never die; the gossip will never diet," touts one of their various bios.

So here's the specifics. Gossip played last night at the Showbox and if you missed it, I'm sorry. It felt communal somehow, the entire room moving as one unit, one mass brain, starting slow, ratcheting up in intensity, spilling out into the street satiated at 12:36am.

One of the things barely addressed in this profile of Why? last week was, admittedly, bandleader Yoni Wolf's sense of humor—it's there in his songs as much as are any straight-faced existential concerns, undercutting their seriousness and adding some much needed levity to the proceedings. Eskimo Snow may be their least cut-up, most somber album to date, but live, that sense of humor still expands from self-deprecating to full-on clowning.

"What's up now, bitches," was Wolf's greeting to the Vera Project. Introducing Eskimo Snow's restrained album opener "These Hands" following Alopecia track "Song of the Sad Assassin," which culminates live in an almost free-jazz freakout, guitar squealing away, bass popping with unexpected funk, Wolf told the all-ages crowd, "this next one's like a comedown, like you've been snortin' 'cain, you've been snortin' bumps all night, and this is the comedown." When multi-instrumentalist (and Seattlite) Doug McDiarmid wished a kid in the crowd a happy 18th birthday, encouraging folks to slap him "on the tuccus," Wolf added, "we're gonna fuck him in the tuccus later." Then he mentioned he'd been jogging today and gave a shout out to Olympic Fitness. He said that last night they played Anacortes and "Anacortes was talking about Seattle, and it wasn't all positive—they think they're better than you" (boo, Shelbyville). His last words pre-encore were, "in closing, we wanna pledge allegiance to deez nuts."

The band also alleviated any potential gravity by just rocking the fuck out, turning what might sound dour and doom-laden on record into massively cathartic workouts (further lightening the mood was Wolf's hopping and spinning around the stage, his advanced "jazz-hand" techniques, and his stretching during longer instrumental passages). Josiah Wolf on drums was, as usual, a flurry of fro and limbs, pounding out time and adding ready-to-burst drum rolls to several songs. Especially enlivening was the addition of Fog's Andrew Broeder on guitar and Mark Erickson on bass. Erickson's bass was a constant, heavy anchor; Broeder's guitar went from fried riffing to wah-wah wetted pecking, and he also provided, along with McDiarmid, on-point background vocals, helping to recreate some of the multi-tracked layers of the band's albums.

Highlights included: the stage lights going blood red during "Song of the Sad Assassin" as Wolf sang, "then your face turned red/as you said to me..."; the sing-along chorus and electrified outro of "The Vowells, pt. 2"; the syncopated drums (and again, full sold-out crowd sing-along chorus) of the morbidly romantic "These Few Presidents"; Wolf's brief beatboxing on "Gnashville"; the rocking climax of "Into the Shadows of My Embrace"; the encore of "Yo Yo Bye Bye" and (!) the "big kid tested motherfucker approved" Hymie's Basement jam "21st Century Pop Song," which ended with Wolf and Broeder trading ridiculously rapid fire syllables.

Here's the setlist:

"Against Me"
"Song of the Sad Assassin"
"These Hands"
"The Vowels, pt. 2"
"These Few Presidents"
"January 20 Something"
"Gnashville"
"On Rose Walk, Insomniac"
"Into the Shadows of My Embrace"
"One Rose"
"This Blackest Purse"
"A Sky For Shoeing Horses Under"
"Simeon's Dilemma"
(encore)
"Yo Yo Bye Bye"
"21st Century Pop Song"

Mount Eerie and No Kids kind of combined forces last night, with Phil Elverum drumming for the Vancover BC band, adding slightly looser and occasionally thunderous rhythms to their refined piano pop, and No Kidders Julia Chirka and Nick Krgovich playing keyboards alongside Elverum's electrified metal riffing and dual drummers for Mount Eerie. No Kids' set concentrated on what must be newer songs, which were generally slower and more subdued than the often poppy numbers on their excellent debut album Come Into My House. The band played a couple songs off that album, including a rousing rendition of "Halloween." Mount Eerie more or less played new album Wind's Poem in its entirety, and it sounded more engaging than I've ever heard it, all wind-screaming feedback (and wind-whistling from Elverum and co.), rhythmic thrum, slow-motion metal riffing, and Elverum, quiet and meek, singing in the middle of all that storming sound. For their last song, he asked the audience if it should be a quiet number or a loud one; the answer was unanimous and resounding: "LOUD!" Elverum obliged.

(Photos by Jackie Canchola.)

So, this is what Baby Boomer triumphalism and opulence look and sound like. Steely Dan won. Their fans won, too. These folks, most of them white and over 40, could afford the $60-$175 ticket prices to wallow in the gilded nostalgia of hearing Steely Dan’s immaculately conceived and executed 1977 LP Aja performed in its entirety—topped off with a generous dessert of myriad Dan hits from their artistically successful and lucrative run from 1972-1980.

I felt privileged to witness this spectacle.

Steely Dan represent the pinnacle of a certain kind of American band: the rare convergence of genius musicians/arrangers/composers/producers doing precisely what they want and making incredible bank while doing so. Steely Dan’s brain trust, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, had the best session players at their beck and call, plus the best studios, the best drugs, and probably some of the best groupies at their disposal during the music industry’s booming ’70s. Their music blossomed from neurotic perfectionism and came filtered through a neurasthenic Jewish soul. And hundreds of thousands of people still care enough in 2009 to shell out more money than I spend on food in a month for the honor of witnessing them. Steely Dan win.

Aja was perhaps the Dan’s last classic album, and it certainly is worth hearing all at once in a large venue with many rabid, affluent fans. The sound could’ve been sharper, especially the bass, but overall, people seemed very, very happy with what they heard coming from the 13 (!) musicians onstage and celebrated the completion of each song with ovations that wrung every cent out of that $60-$175.

Besides Becker on guitar and Fagen on keyboards, melodica, and vocals, Steely Dan consisted of a bassist, three female vocalists, a pianist, another guitarist, a four-piece brass section (saxes, trumpet, trombone), and monstrously talented drummer Keith Carlock.

After a brief, jazzy knuckle-cracking sans Becker and Fagen, the well-rehearsed ensemble cruised through Aja’s seven tracks with all the ultra-competent finesse of musicians at the absolute zenith of their formidable games (backing vocalist Carolyn Leonhart-Escoffery prefaced the Aja recreation with a placing of a needle on the record itself and turned it over and did it again after “Deacon Blues” concluded). So, yeah. “Black Cow,” “Aja,” “Deacon Blues,” “Peg,” “Home at Last,” “I Got the News,” “Josie”: You (should) know the drill. This record is the epitome of smooth jazz funk, with rock chilling in the back garden with an aged scotch whiskey most of its duration. Every surface gleamed like diamond-encrusted stars.

Aja is sophisticated sonic pleasure incarnate, the soundtrack to the (very) good life, but tinged with a cynicism and sly wit beneath the rich, all-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlds exterior. Aja is built to last, still rewarding after hundreds of listens, still very much alive on the stage and adaptable to the whims of its two creators. I say this even as my 18-year-old self is apoplectic with disbelief. Note to my 18-year-old self: Go to hell.

The Horrors are a Neil Gaiman dream of a rock band: all tailored black trenchcoats and blazers and toothpick-skinny slacks and improbably giant black hair, like human Q-tips had been used to clean all of London's sootiest chimneys. They're a sharp looking bunch—one of their t-shirts is just a picture of a stylish looking low-cut boot, and sure enough the band members whose shoes I could spy were all wearing gleaming black leather boots or dress shoes. Lead singer Faris Badwan alternately brooded and paced around the stage, hung from the microphone like a coat on rack, or shook like the mic had suddenly started shocking him—often, at climactic moments, he would throw his arms out towards the crowd like he was casting a spell.

Who/whatever funds their shoe shopping has also laid out for some pretty nice, you know, musical gear—all the usual, plus an impressive array of synthesizers and a pedal-board roughly the size of my apartment. It all gets put to good use crafting the band's shadowy shoegaze sound, which in concert tended to be slightly more raucous and less restrained than on record, some subtleties sacrificed in favor of a more overpowering sonic assault.

The echoing carnival organ riff and buzzsaw guitars of "Who Can Say" sounded great, as irresistible as on record, whereas "New Ice Age" just sounded overbearing and blunt. "Mirror's Image" was good and haunted, especially Badwan's vocals, but some of the engrossing interplay between the upper-fret basslines, the smeared guitars, and the insistent keyboards got lost in the live translation. I can't recall if I heard them play "Three Decades," but if they did, it was with something less than the awesome, My Bloody Valentine-echoing guitar sheen of the recorded version. Overall, I guess I prefer the band on record; the live show was leaving me cold enough that I split at the first sign of a slow song (I understand I missed a cover of Suicide's "Ghostrider"—damn—and presumably also their set/album-closing motorik epic "Sea Within a Sea"; I'm listening to the latter on headphones right now and it sounds just great).

A word about the crowd: I can't remember the last time I've seen so many goths intermingling with odd, colorful club kids. All these NME readers coming out of the woodwork/batcaves! Well done, Seattle.

As for opening act Japanese Motors, let's cut to the Vice Records-signed band's t-shirts:

Eh, ok. Plenty of that stuff around these days, but Japanese Motors do it in a manner that's just entirely unconvincing. Like if washed-out surf garage weren't happening right now, they'd switch to the next thing without skipping a beat—no crime, but you didn't get much of a sense of investment.
Add to that the fact that they were such bright, sunny daylight to the Horror's night, and it made for a rather blah opening act. Best thing I saw them do was a cover of Wire's "Outdoor Miner," complete with Blur-ry British accent.

Photos by Kristen Blush; many more after the jump.