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.

“This guy sounds like Soundgarden Shreds,” my +1 said, referring to the popular, mocking YouTube phenomenon, as a lanky white guy (aka Water Beds) drummed and triggered downtuned guitar from his iPod (I think) through a stack of Soldano amps. To me, he sounded like GodHeadsilo, with his rumbling drums and gut-punch dirges, with a little truculent Killdozer churn and burn thrown into the equation. Whatever the case, dude’s a one-man post-grunge expulsion.

Seattle guitar/bass/drums trio Bronze Fawn seemed to be fixated on that revered post-rock axis of Mogwai, MONO, and Explosions in the Sky—which would be great if this were 1997; but it’s 2009, and Bronze Fawn haven’t really added any new wrinkles to this style of rock, in which surprising dynamics and exceptional instrumental prowess are crucial for avoiding torpor. Unfortunately, Bronze Fawn’s Sturm und Drang instrumentals, for all their pendulum swings from majesty to contemplation, were more ponderous than thunderous. Their buildups and breakdowns just weren’t extreme or interesting enough to challenge their post-rockin’ heroes—who, honestly, can be pretty dull themselves at times. The crowd stood stock still in cross-armed solemnity and appreciation as Bronze Fawn ground on with heads-down earnestness. It was boringly beautiful and beautifully boring.

(An aside about the crowd: It was the most stoic—and dude-intensive—I’ve seen in a while [since Sunn O))), maybe?]. Hardly any energy radiated from it, which posited a chicken/egg question: Were people lethargic because of the music emanating from the stage, or was the musical excitement flattened due to a dearth of audience chi? Or was it a combo of both? I dunno, but something’s awry when my note-taking and moderate headnodding are the most demonstrative actions at a gig. Yeah, it was a Tuesday night, but still...)

Polvo started late, due to issues with the sound (Croc sonic guru Jim Anderson was conspicuous by his absence). The North Carolinians worrisomely tinkered with the amps and instruments; Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski looked frustrated, even disgusted while testing/tuning their guitars—not an auspicious omen.

Nothing like seeing an Israeli noise-rock trio on Rosh Hashanah… Bizarrely, this was my first Monotonix live experience (previous attempts to catch them were thwarted by bad timing and scheduling conflicts), and my short response is this: Monotonix are three Dan Deacons with a massive Iggy Pop complex.

But to elaborate: You are much better off seeing Monotonix with no prior knowledge of their shtick. However, due to every blogger and music journalist and YouTube-posting video buff in the world frothing about how spectacularly rambunctious their live performances are, the potential shock and awe Monotonix can deliver is severely diminished.

Apparently, there was some confusion about last night's event at the Showbox, billed as Sneaker Pimps: the World's Largest Sneaker Show and featuring headliners Clipse and Slick Rick supported by a slew of local hip hop acts. A sign at the door said: "If you thought you were buying tickets to Sneaker Pimps the trip hop band refunds are available at point of purchase." Inside the show, a woman asked me in what sounded like a German accent if I was there to see Sneaker Pimps the band (I wasn't, but I may have been a tad under-dressed compared to all the sneaker geeks)—she was, but they'd given her a drink ticket in addition to her refund, so she was hanging around and watching They Live!

There were display racks of different sneaker designs set up along the walls of each bar and onstage, and the house lights were up brighter than your average show so that everyone could get a good look at the shoes. The event was sponsored by a wireless company, and there was one of those screens behind the stage that would display text messages sent to a certain number—two messages from among the many misspelled mash-notes and camera phone photos: "Sad fad" and "RIP dj AM." Fresh Espresso and They Live! both performed abbreviated sets with the high energy they're known for, They Live! joined by a small crew of break-dancers as well as a momentary guest spot from THEE Satisfaction, but the crowd seemed pretty cold to the performances. One performer suggested that the sneaker crowd were too worried about looking sharp and not scuffing their shoes to actually have a good time. I don't get the designer footwear fetish thing (to me, it seems like a bunch of male Carrie Bradshaws), and the whole vibe of the show was just realllllly not my thing, so I ended up splitting before either Slick Rick or Clipse went on. Too bad, because Clipse's set forever ago at Chop Suey killed, and I would have liked to see them again, just under different circumstances.