Well, we knew it was going to be a different venue, a different atmosphere, and a different show. But DAMN how sweet to have the kind of energy and cohesive audience attention and participation in this second show for both The Mountain Goats and The Moaners. I present them in turn, in order.
Before we really get into it, though, melophobe must sincerely and profusely thank Melissa Swingle and Laura King of The Moaners. True to melophobe form in recent days, we neglected to bring a contact number to the Middle East in case of mishaps with the guest list. Mishaps occurred, and as we scrambled to set it right, Swingle strolled in and came to our rescue. Any fantastic photographs are completely thanks to The Moaners. And as continuing luck for our collective senses of faux-journalistic integrity, we don’t even have to lie about them rocking. I overheard someone in the audience stage-whisper a reply to Swingle’s “We’re The Moaners,” with a douchbaggery-filled, “If you’re not The Mountain Goats, I don’t care.” I’m betting he cares now, having seen the rocking that ensued.
The Moaners made the most of The Middle East Downstairs’ low-ceilinged, cavelike atmosphere. The single long room, with its crush of people at the stage thinning out to one person/ft^2 by the time you get to the door, was the perfect foil to Friday night’s sparse, remote stadium-seated auditorium. Because of this, crowd members chatted with each other before the show, friendly and excited. This energy and excitement seemed to bolster The Moaners, who had complained the night before of pre-show (and during-show) jitters, owing to the hushed, dry (literally, figuratively) room. No jitters apparent on Saturday night, though. Opening with the spare, pulsing guitar hook that kicks off “Monkey Tongue,” from 2007’s Blackwing Yalobusha, Swingle stared down the crowd, eyes piercing even through her pinkish shades. When King kicked in with a cymbal crash and then persistent high-hat beating, we were off to a rolicking start. As suggested in Night One’s review, King more than makes up for Swingle’s relative stillness with riveting full-body drumming, throwing herself all across her kit, head and hair flailing rhythmically.
Swingle’s slide-bedecked left hand rode up and down her open-tuned guitar during much of the band’s set, treating us again to a coy sound full of the slow tension that has led us to love The Moaners. The two gals clearly enjoyed themselves on stage, checking in with each other to share a smile or a meaningful glance. This was particularly apparent during “Hopelessly Lost,” another cut from their 2007 album. Swingle stuck her head through her harmonica’s neck holder—yeah, that’s what they’re called, apparently—and started in strumming and singing, glancing over at King just before she entered a couple of bars later. King’s rhythms and fills in both this piece and the rest of the set presented much more rock’n’roll than many of the bands we’ve seen, with a hollow percussive sound unencumbered by additional rhythm instruments. We’re sad to see them hit the road again, but the experience of touring with The Mountain Goats must be an amazing one. Hopefully, we’ll catch’em again next time they’re in town.
Likewise benefiting from the closer, riled-up crowd were our headlining heroes, The Mountain Goats. Strutting onstage with dancing eyes and a wild grin, John Darnielle greeted Cambridge with great exuberance, charging to the front-center of the stage, slapping high-fives and gripping palms. Then he repeated to his right, fans clamoring their admiration and excitement for what promised to be—and was—a riveting show.
After such a frenetic entrance, Darnielle took his place in the half-light all the way stage-right, and The Mountain Goats settled in to the hushed, suspended start of “Michael Myers Resplendent” the final track from last month’s release, Heretic Pride. Dreamlike in its Cecil-B.-DeMille-recalling lyrics, it progresses into an at-times choppy celebration of preparing and stepping out into . . . what, exactly? Darnielle’s fantastic-but-occasionally cryptic lyrics on the most recent album remain in top form, sometimes connecting one song to another with thematic imagery, and other times glorying in stand-alone, self-immolating celebration. For instance, the second song of the night—and title track to February’s release—revels in the at-last arrived “taste [of] jasmine on my tongue.” This picks up and expands on the previous track’s ("San Bernardino") “Dead languages on our tongues,” and paves the way for the eventual “Molasses on my tongue” from “How To Embrace A Swamp Creature.” As Paste Magazine’s Jesse Jarnow adroitly notes in his review, all of these tongues hearken back to The Sunset Tree’s “This Year,” where Darnielle sings of “The taste of scotch rich on my tongue.” Though I understand Jarnow’s point regarding the appearance of a lyrical “crutch,” I disagree that it “dim[s] the overall impact.” Indeed, such rich internal cross-reference heightens my enjoyment of knowing the albums well, creates a small treasure hunt for new listeners, and paints for all the importance of taste and sensualism in general, so evident in every track on Heretic Pride.
Anyway. We’ve got a show to talk about. Do read the Paste review, though, it’s really quite good. Just not until you’re done here.
The Middle East provided an opportunity for more enthusiastic and playful banter and crowd interaction than had the MFA, perhaps even above the levels reached the day before, what with the threats about Verdi and culture. First, Darnielle lost track of his lyrics midway through the first verse of “Heretic Pride,” prompting a goofy, thoughtful grin and some self-conscious stammering. After then giggling through another false start, he popped a string getting back into it, and, while considering what exactly to do, presented to us “The rhythm section of The Mountain Goats!” Drummer Jon Wurster and bassist Peter Hughes then vamped for about a minute, lightly playing off of each other and filling the time nicely. Darnielle then swung his electric around his neck his shoulder and flew right into “Heretic Pride.” The brighter, more insistent sound eschewed the sweet acoustic introduction, skipping instead to the feeling of the more desperate, wild-eyed story that unfolds. Following the track, during which the tech replaced the broken string on his acoustic, Darnielle told us that we’d just had a preview of the future electric set scheduled for later in the evening.
Since he’d already connected Boston to “Heretic Pride” on Friday night, I was surprised when he introduced “Autoclave” by saying, “I thought of you people when I wrote this song. And by ‘you people,’ I mean the people in Boston. And how you’d react.” Thinking that he had cracked and was mis-reusing banter, it took me until the end of the song to realize what the hell he was talking about. The lyrics to the third verse, performed up an octave from the rest of the song, desperately declaim: “I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls / On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and shrieking seagulls / And the dream went on forever, one single static frame / Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” So, yeah, now I get it. Yeow.
The Mountain Goats really treated the sold-out Cambridge crowd like it was special. During his solo set in the middle of the performance, Darnielle proclaimed that he was pretty sure that he’d never played the next song live. Starting into “Have To Explode,” from Tallahassee, the audience cheered the selection—and, I imagine, the fact that they were hearing something in a form never previously heard. Darnielle also played us “Lady From Shanghai” off of Petronius, apparently performed for the first time since 1996. After this, someone offered him a drink, which Darnielle declined by telling us that Sunday was his birthday, and that he really didn’t want to wake up hung-over. With this admission, the crowd sang him “Happy Birthday,” while he walked to center stage and graciously basked in the well-wishes. He then repeated “So Desperate” from The Sunset Tree, which had closed out the solo set on Friday. Perhaps because the crowd was all crushed together, its members unable to help being pressed into each other and feeling their neighbors’ heat and humanity, “So Desperate” took on an additional tenderness and connection to the audience that topped even the already-deeply affecting performance the night before.
The Mountain Goats closed out the night with three killer encore selections, taking place over the course of two separate encore performances. For the first encore—that seeming compulsory, contractual encore—Darnielle started strumming and chatting, while Hughes sat himself down, plucking along on his bass, and Wurster settled back onto his stool. The intro gradually built into an intense, blustering “Going To Georgia,” with approximately ninety-five percent audience participation throughout. Following that, after another attempt to get him drinking, Darnielle reiterated that it was his birthday in the morning, that he was determined to wake up feeling good about it. Fittingly, he said, “I’m gonna play this song because I mean it,” and launched into “This Year.” Interestingly, this is the song with “the taste of scotch rich on my tongue,” and this after turning down a glass of whiskey. In any event, the performance howled through with increasing energy and power, finally ending with The Mountain Goats walking off waving, smiling, thrilled.
Management brought the house lights up, and the sound tech started dismantling the stage, removing Hughes’ mic and disconnecting the mic on the bass drum. With the crowd still cheering and chanting, The Mountain Goats eventually came back out, still all smiles and thanks. As Wurster sat back at his drums, the tech told him that he’d already disconnected the mic, which Wurster simply shrugged off. Before long, it was plugged back in, as was Hughes, and Darnielle told us, in paraphrase, “You’re getting to hear this because you weren’t calling for it after every song. So you might consider why that is, and maybe tell your friends. Or just keep it to yourself.” For its reticence, the audience was well-rewarded with “Best Ever Death Metal Band,” from All Hail West Texas. This final group sing-along culminated with Darnielle screaming, “Do it!” just before the “Hail Satan!” line, and an entire audience screamed the line, many with Satan’s Horns at the end of their arms.
Two nights, two concerts, two bands, one question: one more?
Set List:
1. Michael Myers Resplendent (acoustic w/band)—Heretic Pride
2. Heretic Pride (electric)—Heretic Pride
3. You Or Your Memory (acoustic)—The Sunset Tree
4. Autoclave (acoustic)—Heretic Pride
5. Wild Sage (acoustic)—Get Lonely
6. Sax Rohmer #1 (acoustic)—Heretic Pride
7. Have To Explode (acoustic solo)—Tallahassee
8. The Lady From Shanghai (acoustic solo)—Petronius
9. So Desperate (acoustic solo)—Heretic Pride
10. Jeff Davis Country Blues (acoustic solo)—All Hail West Texas
11. In The Craters On The Moon (electric w/band)—Heretic Pride
12. Love Love Love (electric)—The Sunset Tree
13. Sept 15th 1983 (electric)—Heretic Pride
14. Lion’s Teeth (electric)—The Sunset Tree
15. Lovecraft In Brooklyn (electric)—Heretic Pride
Encore:
1. Going To Georgia (acoustic)—Zopilote Machine
2. This Year (acoustic)—The Sunset Tree
Second Encore:
1. Best Ever Death Metal Band (acoustic)—All Hail West Texas
Ugh. Paste’s profile of Free Energy made me kind of hate them. So does your review. It’s this unctuous defense of good-time rock-and-roll ("we’re just here to party, and we’re awesome!") that seems more self-serving than fun-loving.
by beth on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 09.41 pm from the entry: Foreign Born + Free Energy - The Knitting Factory (Brooklyn, NY; Mar. 12, 2010)
that inescapable feeling you are referring to, is that like when you hear something and you could have sworn you heard it before because of the nostalgic catchy quality? or is is like when you’ve heard a band exactly like said band?
great post by the way!
by paul on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 03.15 pm from the entry: The Novel Ideas - "The Sky Is A Field" - Borrow It
Whoa! I had no idea she was enegaged. You would never know with the way she behaves! Wow!
by art on Wed Mar 17, 2010 at 09.48 am from the entry: Nikki Darlin and John McCauley: 1+1=1
This comment stream is so meta. Great review Kelly.
by chris on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 07.50 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
no prob. The whole album is excellent, combining some of the harder sonics of Los Angeles with the meat of his debut and obviously difficult to summarize in only 50 words… 
I’d say it’s on par with the debut, but better than Los Angeles.
by kelly on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.23 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
By the way, I really liked the mp3 posted. Thanks.
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “WHO WROTE THIS...PUKE ! “Picture yourself coasting your bike past space funk palm trees, homeless harpists, vintage video arcades, electronic drum circles, and 60s psychedelic singers who’re waiting for the bus. Cosmogramma is kinda like that if someone suddenly tripped you just as you’re starting to enjoy the ride. But in a good way.””
by Joshua H on Tue Mar 16, 2010 at 06.17 pm from the entry: Flying Lotus - "Cosmogramma" - Buy It
