Ducktails, Alex Bleeker, Chris Cohen & Weyes Blood at The Earl, March 9, 2013

Still playing catch-up on recent March Madness shows . . .

The fine band Real Estate, which has produced at least two near-perfect albums, are currently taking a break from recording and touring, but the individual members are still on the road with their various side projects.  Saturday night's show at The Earl showcased two of those side projects, Ducktails and Alex Bleeker & The Freaks.

Before getting to that though, a month or so ago, I noted that there are reportedly two separate systems in the brain that respond to music. The first one is veridical and responds to the pleasant sounds of the songs we already know. The other is sequential and anticipates the next note or harmonic move in an unfamiliar phrase of music. The sequential system is stimulated when music follows the logic of the notes or surprises us in some way that isn't merely arbitrary.  Not to be unnecessarily academic about these things, but recognition of these two systems assists in understanding the pleasures of Saturday night's Real Estate revue. 

Case in point: at first, I didn't much care for the opening act, Weyes Blood (pronounced "Wise Blood," like the Flannery O'Connor novel), as the music was unfamiliar to me and I initially didn't understand what it was they were doing.  Weyes Blood is Natalie Mering, ex-bassist of the band Jackie-O Motherfucker and the sister of Zak Mering of Raw Thrills and Greatest Hits. Weyes Blood started out as a conventional, unamplified folk singer but eventually began experimenting with electronic sounds, and after a relocation to Baltimore she started playing the darkly haunted narcotic drifter ballads that she brought to The Earl Saturday night.  

She sang on stage accompanied only by an electronic keyboardist (who also played bass with Alex Bleeker later that evening, so there's a two-degrees-of-separation connection with Real Estate there) and on some songs with her own acoustic guitar while the keyboards provided dark shadows of oddly creaking sounds.  It sounded strange and somehow "wrong" to me at first - cold, distant and somehow off-putting - and since I hadn't heard of her or her music before Saturday's performance, there was no veridical system response in my brain to her music.  I couldn't quite put it all together at first, so my sequential system wasn't firing either, but as she continued to sing her dark, neo-Nico, death-folk laments in her eerily beautiful, quasi-Teutonic voice, it suddenly all started to come together for me and the neurons of my sequential system started firing.  Suddenly, as soon as I "got it," the music became, instead of off-putting, interesting and absorbing, if still somewhat cold and distant.  Although Natalie's vocals are swooning and sweeping, and she often seemed caught up in her own on-stage rapture as she sang swaying from side to side while clutching the microphone in both hands, the overall sound is still a cold and haunting folk, as can be heard in  her song Romneydale. 

It was about 9:45 pm.  The Earl audience was still relatively small and subdued, although they still applauded with enthusiasm to each of Weyes Blood's songs.

The next act, Chris Cohen, was much more readily accessible.  A 37-year-old native of Los Angeles currently residing in the farmlands of Vermont, Cohen is a singing drummer who records all of the instruments on his albums and writes slightly psychedelic pop music, and has played and toured with a number of notable indie acts, including Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Deerhoof, and Cass McCombs, whom he most resembles musically in his laid-back approach.  

Cohen's songs follow their own idiosyncratic forms, but are still melodic in a homegrown and conventional sense.  He bends the reality of his pop-culture references so that it is unclear where and when they're from.  Some 1970s singer-songwriter? Some lost psychedelic-era curiosity?  Village Green-era Kinks?  A forgotten 1980s jangle-rock band?  As with some of the best songs of Josh Rouse or Meyer Hawthorne, when you hear Cohen songs like Optimist High, you feel like you’re rediscovering an old forgotten favorite. 

His gentle songs are pastoral and serene, glowing with easy comfort as he builds a soothing space away from the world.  The snare drum doesn't receive a lot of attention, and is tapped rather than struck when it does, and the pace never ventures beyond mid tempo. His music is composed entirely of comforting sounds: cracked, spidery guitars, grand pianos, reverb haze, and Cohen's Ray Davies croon.  This is music to get lost to, and the time-warp in his music is just his way of covering his tracks.

These songs sound almost designed to bring the mind's veridical and sequential systems together into their own harmony.  The apparent familiarity of the music soothes the veridical system, while the conventions of his references make easy work for the sequential system.  The two are at peace with one another, which makes listening to his music feel like wearing a comfortable pair of favorite jeans.

Since he records all of the parts on his album, he brought along three fine musicians (guitar, bass, and keys) for the tour.

By now, it was 10:30 pm, and the audience had grown considerably and seemed quite appreciative of Cohen's music.

The next band to take the stage was led by Real Estate bass player Alex Bleeker, now playing guitar and singing.  Alex Bleeker & the Freaks pretty much stole the evening, winning the evening's Battle of the Bands.  Their music melded roadhouse rock, pop, blues, country, and soul in a way that was instantly recognizable to the mind's sequential system, but Bleeker triggered a virtual veridical orgasm during one extended jam of blistering guitar.  While the sequential mind was easily putting together all of the pieces of the instrumental,  Mr. Bleeker approached the microphone singing, "I used to think maybe you loved me now baby I'm sure."  It was instantly recognizable, but out of context I couldn't nail down the song.  What was it?  "And I just can't wait till the day when you knock on my door," he continued.  This was like veridical foreplay, teasing us along in a state of aroused half-recognition.  "Now everytime I go for the mailbox, gotta hold myself down. 'Cos I just wait till you write me you're coming around." 

"I'm walking on sunshine," he sang, and instantly it became crystal clear - Katrina & the Waves, 1985.  "And don't it feel good?" and it did, the entire audience erupting into a spontaneous singalong.  The veridical moment was resolved, and the band and the whole audience reveled in a long extended cover of Walking On Sunshine.

But this was just one moment out of an extraordinary set.  The audience was clearly loving it, several young men at the front of the stage high-fiving the band members and each other as often as they could.  The band was clearly loving it as well, and kept lifting things up another level.  Mr. Bleeker told the audience in all sincerity that Saturday night was easily the best so far of the entire tour.  

Although Mr. Bleeker is ordinarily the bassist for Real Estate, with The Freaks he plays guitar and sings, handing the bass duties off to the same musician was played keyboards for Weyes Blood earlier (and bears a striking resemblance to Lancel Lannister).  Mr. Bleeker handles occasional vocals for Real Estate, and has a fine voice not unlike J Mascis' whine.

The audience, which had been growing all evening, was energized by the set, and Mr. Bleeker and the Freaks did a perfect job of warming up the audience for the evening's headliners, Ducktails, the reverb-heavy side project of Real Estate guitarist Matt Mondanile, who didn't take the stage until nearly 12:30.

The bar had been set pretty high for the evening, and Ducktails didn't really stand a chance.  But they put on a great set which showcased Mr. Mondanile's shimmering guitar work, and the revved up crowd was along for the ride. 

Ducktails relied more on the sequential than the veridical, and part of the pleasure of the experience was hearing the ways the band explored pop territory behind Mondanile's guitar and singing.

Like the music of Real Estate, Ducktails' music has a dreamy, laid-back sound to it, more akin to the music of Chris Cohen than to Alex Bleeker's roadhouse rowdiness.  It was a bit of a transition, but Mr. Mondanile helped by meeting the audience halfway, putting more of a bite and a kick into the Ducktail songs than is heard on record.

Ducktails played a full 60-minute set, lasting until half past one.  I was tired and kept waiting to see if Matt Mondanile was going to bring Alex Bleeker out on stage with him (which didn't happen), and kept getting lost in the dreamy textures of Ducktails music.

Ducktails' latest album, The Flower Lane, is currently at the number 9 spot on CMJ's Top 20 list (see nifty sidebar feature to the right), so it was appropriate for them to headline, but based on the similarities of their music to the laid-back tempo of Chris Cohen's, and the climactic rowdiness of Alex Bleeker's, it would have been a better show if Ducktails had followed Cohen, and Bleeker and his Freaks headlined.  No disrespect, just sayin'.

All in all, it was a great night of music.  Going in, I had thought that four bands were at least one too many, but each artist had something original and different to say, and each was worth listening to.