jane's addiction / death from above 1979 / braids / final flash / new teeth
16-07-2011
lebreton flats, ottawa
this was actually a really solid day in the park, for me. my general rule with the ottawa bluesfest (which happened every year at the bottom of the hill that i lived on the top of) was that i'd pay cover (two-three times my usual show price) if i could get a good day out of it, which meant i'd need to get a strong headliner and at least one other set, and probably necessarily on a saturday or a sunday to make the day worthwhile. some years, i didn't go at all.
as it happened to be, i had no intention of paying cover this year, but i happened to win a ticket for the metric date. so, i scalped it and used the cash to buy tickets for the saturday, instead. of all the bluesfest shows i went to, this was actually probably the best lineup for me: i showed up very early and had essentially no down time in shuffling between new teeth, final flash, braids, dfa 1979 and then finally jane's addiction...
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showing up to the ottawa bluesfest at 1:00 is a fairly unusual thing to do, an act that largely exists within the realm of the friends and family members of the bands that are playing. in my case, i saw an opportunity for a double-header wake 'n' bake in the sun that i simply couldn't refuse.
i was a little bit late for the show because i took a lengthy toking detour around to a side entrance that has been open for a decade and yet was strangely closed this year. i ended up having to walk all the way back around again. ugh? well, as it was the toking detour that was really the point of the afternoon, it was an annoyance of marginal concern.
the set i eventually walked in on was composed of a lot of new material, as well as several broken-string-as-an-excuse-to-kill-time ploys. let's state this clearly out front: they quite clearly didn't have an hour and fifteen minutes worth of material to play, nor would they be used to playing for that long. as a small act, that's forgivable.
to those who know the ep, how was the new material? well, i'm not sure, because i don't think it's done yet. it's certainly more aligned to a qotsa/stoner-rock type sound that comes off a little dated, and that's a clear change that looks like it's probably here to stay. however, the general nature of the act as guitar/singer/songwriter focused has not been disturbed.
a better way to describe the new material is maybe like this: there's a certain subset of rock music, mostly in the alt/indie family, that is based around a single ego, that ego being contained within the fusion of creative, abstract, guitar-based songwriting with a passionate vocal delivery. the result is generally something both unique and memorable because the product is the result, at least nearly, of a single individual's personality ported into the electric guitar. a large component of that is often the lead work and there's no exception here; the singer/guitarist for this band is a very capable player with rather good taste. so, while the new material is in the same genre of qotsa, it's guitar/singer/songwriter nature gives it a level of individuality that transcends the generic.
is it good? well, as of now, i liked the older material a bit better because it was a lot more fun. yet, as mentioned, i don't think the new stuff is done yet. it was well rehearsed and everything and presented professionally, but there was a lot of free space through the tracks and a general lack of the finishing touches that the ep had. hence, not being done...
they're still worth the $5.00 if you seem them out around town, but a general note of warning should be thrown out there: new teeth are in the process of transitioning away from schizy dance punk and towards a more muscular psychedelic rock sound.
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is montreal still the centre of the musical universe? meh. whatever.
before i review the set, let me point out that the act that immediately followed final flash today on the stage they were playing on was the jonas brothers, or one of them, or something like that. the jonas fans, which were all teenagers, were there early - very early - and completely blocked off access to the first ten or so rows of the stage. at first, the audience was more or less unaware of the existence of some other band playing, but the band actually turned some of them around; by the end of the show, the jonas brothers fans were screaming and chanting and pumping their fists in the air...
....which was actually completely hilarious.
how was they act? well, they're operating in a pretty basic pop/psych/post-punk territory, but they didn't really stand out, which is a shame. they seem to have everything they need: the right aesthetic, the right image, the right amount of talent, the right production and even the right amount of raw energy/emotion and the knowledge of when to use it. the bottom line, though, is that the songwriting is generic. the music doesn't break out of an existing mold, it simply reinforces it's stereotypes. the layering, harmonies, production, rhythms, syncopation...it's all so woefully familiar...
there were points were they really clicked and jumped into neat jams, but they were short and far between. while this act has the potential to cut through the pack, they're going to have to write some better songs first.
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it's been my experience that braids is an act that tends to evoke strong emotions by partitioning would-be listeners into love and hate categories.
i saw them in a small bar in ottawa (maverick's) on the second date of their tour back at the end of january, and the sound was awful; five months on, they seem to have worked out the bugs. in fact, they sounded great through the bluesfest's zillion dollar system. part of the reason i wanted to go down today was to catch them without a malfunctioning PA and clueless sound tech...
the source of most of the anti-braids backlash seems to be rooted in the idea that they sound a whole lot like the animal collective. do they? well, there's an influence, but it's not a guiding force. i honestly hear a larger influence from sigur ros, bjork and the cocteau twins. regardless, they're on their first actual record here. it's not uncommon for first records to be a sketchpad based on the influences common to the band members.
the band seemed fairly relaxed in front of the crowd and reproduced the record rather well. whether you would enjoy the show or not depends entirely on whether you like the record because the show essentially *is* the record.
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so, what's it like seeing DFA 1979 in a stadium rock show five years after they broke up?
it sucks.
i wasn't interested then or now, but it would have been a better experience to see them playing in one of the smaller clubs around here when they did because the music's just not designed for the crowds they'll inevitably bring in forever, now. it's really obviously designed for small, intimate rock clubs.
i guess they're a fun beer day out with your friends if you're of that mentality, but they've lost what they were and will never be able to get it back.
so, avoid unless you want to spend the day with lots of kids that were too young to get into the bar a few years ago, none of them particularly interested in DANCING.
as a comparison, i saw lightning bolt in montreal in a medium sized bar about ten months ago and it was all about the dancing and was a fucking great time. that mindset wasn't at this show. for the kids that were there, it was about seeing a band they saw a video for on muchmusic. they're just another cool rock band now.....
i bet they'd still tear up the dance floor if you can catch them in the right venue, but the money's not there so good luck on that one.
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they look old, huh? they sound good, though.
the set list was agreeable, with a few newer songs but a lengthy exploration through the back catalog. they did everything they were supposed to do, from the dancers to the confetti to the eastern music playing before the show....
jane's addiction are of course a legendary festival act, being the force behind the lolapalooza tour in the 90s that *i* was too young to get into (see the DFA review). the difference is that jane's was a festival act and DFA was a bar act, so the difference in seeing them now and seeing them then is a little less pronounced.
the one warning i'd throw out is that the audience was full of drunken frat boys that were likely there on the reputation of the act alone. ever seen a bunch of drunken frat boys try to mosh? it's something like a football team warm-up.
furthermore, i have to wonder if they brought their own gear because the bass was just bluntly suffocating, especially on the bass drum. there were points where i was legitimately fearful that the force of the bass was going to reorganize my internal organs and cause me health problems in the long run. now, don't get me wrong; i like a good bass sound, but when it's so strong that it's disrupting your breathing and your heart rate...
i'm glad i got a chance to finally see them, and it'll probably be the last chance i get. by all objective means, it was a good show from the band's perspective. just be wary of the crowds and the absurd volume levels on the low end...
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the playlist up above has snippets of dfa & jane's from ottawa. the jane's set is actually very complete, so much so that it was the best set i could find: i just had to insert "had a dad" from chile around the same time to top it up into a full set. i've uploaded that file to my show archive. i can also offer a full dfa set from 2006 that was astonishingly actually the same setlist as the show i saw in 2011, minus one track.