Gig doings
Sep. 9th, 2004 01:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shermaramaAs is well known, there's only so many ways you can juggle about the
fundamentals of a popular song. There are chord progressions and recognisable chunks and notes on an instrument and though innovation happens, it's incremental and sometimes hard to recognise. The fundamentals of a song take some picking out, at times, since we construct a shell around them, a fabrication of sounds and styles and phrasing, and for those we tend to pick up ones we like from the sounds around us and stick with them.
Arconna have picked up their decorating kit from Incubus, from Idlewild, from post-hardcore and the tech-meister post-rock, from all the things that thoughtful and passionately cool young men may aim for. I catch myself watching bands in two ways; looking at the outside, the front; all the screamo bands we play with who've picked up a particular shell, the indie bands who've gone for the bag the NME might like. Then there's the band inside, the songs that have been poured into the mould, the people playing them and what you may guess about what they'd really like to be doing, and where the inner band don't fit the shell. Inside Arconna, then, there are some good and long-practised instrumentalists. The drummer warming up sits absent-mindedly working double pedals with great rapidity, if little force. The bass player articulates his lines in unusual and careful ways, leading slides into one another, marking corners by leaving notes hanging on one string in passing. The two at the front, both on guitar and vocals, are something like an equal pair in both fields. The harmonies are beyond anything usual with the second singer pursuing lines of his own, off and beyond the main vocal. As a whole band they're well-practised, all on the spot together and definitely making music, producing a flow. They're one of the most accomplished bands I've seen in a while.
Where does all this tidiness (their word, I had a sken at the website) lead? The songs are slick to the point of being difficult to hold on to. Comfortingly, they've supported plenty bigger bands than us and are working their way back up after illness but even with those good billings they don't seem to have fired too many imaginations. There's unquestionable pretty-indie-boy appeal (the bassist plays sitting down to spare a recent
collapsed lung; how delicate-little-flower is that?) and the people who have followed them down from Peterborough today are mostly female; though that's a good trick to pull, it's not much use by itself. They were good, the songs had intent and feel and even some fire and plenty of technicality and sounded lovely in the moment but, the eternal but.. If you took all the ugliness out Tool what would you be left with? Who were the people inside the look and the sound and the chops? No idea.
Nontheless I felt particularly awkward on stage after them. I lost my voice over the weekend and careful tending through the day teased it some sort of back but it didn't hold out and what there was of it was squeakily weird. Three days later I've still got a collection of rumbles and hisses where a voice ought to be. Given that, I was always going to be frustrated and I can't tell how the whole thing went but it didn't feel good. The point of our stuff live is the racket, the sheer volume of drums, the rather chaotic middle with some sort of order imposed on the front, but it didn't feel like there was enough going on. Three of us sing and we all have bits to ourselves and parts that cross as well as backing up other vocals but you know, madrigals it ain't. Too much of what's there felt like it was a default rather than an idea. Not that we haven't got a reasonable set of tools ourselves to default to, but still, I feel like I can't look at the songs broadly enough to see where parts are missing or awkward or obvious. I'm not near enough Oz's level to imagine what could change in such drums, I don't know enough about guitar still to make any sugestions there, there's only so much to be done with bass in a loud two-guitar band and that leaves only the vocals which have problems of their own.
Hmm. Recording at the end of the month, anyway, which may bring some illumination.
fundamentals of a popular song. There are chord progressions and recognisable chunks and notes on an instrument and though innovation happens, it's incremental and sometimes hard to recognise. The fundamentals of a song take some picking out, at times, since we construct a shell around them, a fabrication of sounds and styles and phrasing, and for those we tend to pick up ones we like from the sounds around us and stick with them.
Arconna have picked up their decorating kit from Incubus, from Idlewild, from post-hardcore and the tech-meister post-rock, from all the things that thoughtful and passionately cool young men may aim for. I catch myself watching bands in two ways; looking at the outside, the front; all the screamo bands we play with who've picked up a particular shell, the indie bands who've gone for the bag the NME might like. Then there's the band inside, the songs that have been poured into the mould, the people playing them and what you may guess about what they'd really like to be doing, and where the inner band don't fit the shell. Inside Arconna, then, there are some good and long-practised instrumentalists. The drummer warming up sits absent-mindedly working double pedals with great rapidity, if little force. The bass player articulates his lines in unusual and careful ways, leading slides into one another, marking corners by leaving notes hanging on one string in passing. The two at the front, both on guitar and vocals, are something like an equal pair in both fields. The harmonies are beyond anything usual with the second singer pursuing lines of his own, off and beyond the main vocal. As a whole band they're well-practised, all on the spot together and definitely making music, producing a flow. They're one of the most accomplished bands I've seen in a while.
Where does all this tidiness (their word, I had a sken at the website) lead? The songs are slick to the point of being difficult to hold on to. Comfortingly, they've supported plenty bigger bands than us and are working their way back up after illness but even with those good billings they don't seem to have fired too many imaginations. There's unquestionable pretty-indie-boy appeal (the bassist plays sitting down to spare a recent
collapsed lung; how delicate-little-flower is that?) and the people who have followed them down from Peterborough today are mostly female; though that's a good trick to pull, it's not much use by itself. They were good, the songs had intent and feel and even some fire and plenty of technicality and sounded lovely in the moment but, the eternal but.. If you took all the ugliness out Tool what would you be left with? Who were the people inside the look and the sound and the chops? No idea.
Nontheless I felt particularly awkward on stage after them. I lost my voice over the weekend and careful tending through the day teased it some sort of back but it didn't hold out and what there was of it was squeakily weird. Three days later I've still got a collection of rumbles and hisses where a voice ought to be. Given that, I was always going to be frustrated and I can't tell how the whole thing went but it didn't feel good. The point of our stuff live is the racket, the sheer volume of drums, the rather chaotic middle with some sort of order imposed on the front, but it didn't feel like there was enough going on. Three of us sing and we all have bits to ourselves and parts that cross as well as backing up other vocals but you know, madrigals it ain't. Too much of what's there felt like it was a default rather than an idea. Not that we haven't got a reasonable set of tools ourselves to default to, but still, I feel like I can't look at the songs broadly enough to see where parts are missing or awkward or obvious. I'm not near enough Oz's level to imagine what could change in such drums, I don't know enough about guitar still to make any sugestions there, there's only so much to be done with bass in a loud two-guitar band and that leaves only the vocals which have problems of their own.
Hmm. Recording at the end of the month, anyway, which may bring some illumination.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-09 05:39 am (UTC)Nope
Date: 2004-09-09 07:54 am (UTC)Re: Nope
Date: 2004-09-09 08:30 am (UTC)I guess I was just hoping or I misheared
oh well