The War on Drugs + Purling Hiss + Carter Tanton - Bunk Bar (Portland, OR; Oct. 25, 2011)

It only takes a listen or two to The War on Drugs’ latest album, Slave Ambient, to understand that any appropriate warm-up to the band is going to have to draw on a plethora of influences. That calls for the kind of opening lineup that the optimists among us should be stoked for: diverse, capable, nuanced, and above all, intriguing. But the more jaded concert-goers, myself included, can remember all too many examples of folksy cover acts opening for punk legends, or professed anti-establishmentarians opening for FM radio mainstays. The virtues of expanded horizons notwithstanding, it frankly sucks to sit through a couple-few sets of completely unrelated music just to get to the good stuff. That, however briefly and erroneously, was the fate we feared had befallen us as we waited patiently for the headliner Tuesday night at Bunk Bar.

Carter Tanton, backed by keyboards and drums, came onstage a good half hour late, and started slow. It appeared, at first, to be to Tanton’s great misfortune to have to play to us immediately following a conversation lamenting the lack of balls-to-the-wall rock’n’roll in contemporary music. His opening song, an instrumental number that heavily favored ambience over rhythm, seemed to be a perfect example of the trend in question. The second song at least added vocals – namely an endlessly repeated refrain regarding the inherent difficulty in living without a certain unnamed somebody – but otherwise stuck to the slow guns of the first tune. But, give the band credit. They were just warming up. By the third song, they’d picked up the tempo, showed some serious rock’n’roll acumen, and set the tone for the rest of the set. Granted, Tanton and company succeeded by moving away from experimentation and toward convention, abandoning ambience for straightforward, verse-chorus-verse-chorus rock songs. But they sounded great, and by the end of their set they had a full house of swaying bodies and bobbing heads, and not a complaint to be heard. Carter Tanton was, in the final analysis, a deceptively solid and intriguing act, and the band’s slow start seemed all the more daring considering the energy with which they finished.

In truth, the crowd was plenty warmed up after Carter Tanton, and The War on Drugs could have safely taken the stage at that point. But then we would have been denied an outstanding performance by Purling Hiss. Our introduction to the Philly outfit came, not when they actually took the stage, but before that, during the soundcheck. Singer and guitarist Mike Polizze came onstage, picked up a guitar, and emotionlessly, unselfconsciously, played the shit out of it for about 15 seconds. The blast of sound from the speakers interrupted all conversations and had everyone near the stage plugging their ears. Then, apparently satisfied, he set the guitar down and walked offstage, leaving the audience to wonder why on earth such an aural assault had been necessary. That, as it turned out, is about how Purling Hiss sounds live: an incredibly loud foundation of fuzzy noise, overlaid with simple, deceptively poppy melodies. The band’s sound ranged from blues to psych-pop to metal; each style was basted with a healthy dose of noise, recalling at times classic Weezer or Bleach-era Nirvana, and at other times heavier acts: Shellac, Black Mountain, or the Melvins. Looking around, it appeared that a majority of the audience fell somewhere in the disinterested-to-discomfited range, with a solid core of enthusiasts ringing the stage, eyes closed, jerking their bodies to the music in obvious delight. Perhaps that kind of propensity to divisiveness isn’t the most ideal quality in an opener, but seriously, tough shit. Purling Hiss, however off-putting they may have been to some, were simply too good to pass up. One could object that they were far heavier than anything else that would come out of the night’s lineup - and they absolutely were - but the difference is merely one of degrees, and the groundwork for the headliner couldn’t have been so ably laid without them.

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of 11:30 by the time The War on Drugs took the stage. The various factions of the audience, some fired up by Purling Hiss’ set, others relieved that it was over, were unanimous in their readiness for the headliner. As seems to be their habit, The War on Drugs stacked most of their most memorable songs at the front of the playlist, having knocked out “Baby Missiles,” “Arms Like Boulders,” and “Taking the Farm” before they’d even broken a sweat. None of these songs, performed live, can boast the polish or scale of the recorded tracks. That has, in the past, been my biggest complaint about The War on Drugs as a live act. The offsetting strengths of that fact, however, were on magnificent display on this night. The first real hint of it came on “Taking the Farm,” a song owing a more-than-substantial debt to Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love. On the recorded version, lead singer Adam Granduciel’s lonesome, longing Springsteen-esque howl lends an elegiac aura to the song. Live, that element is present, but heavily subdued under layers of nearly chaotic instrumentation. Only, however, on the surface. Underneath can be heard the simple, rhythmic beat that opens up their music to adventurous jaunts in unexpected directions; the jangly, driving guitars that evoke sunbathed desert highways and Full Moon Fever-era Tom Petty; and the expert keyboard playing of secret weapon, Robbie Bennett, who patiently bides his time, selecting the perfect complementary key to strike like a subdued, less schizophrenic Thelonious Monk. These comparisons undoubtedly carry with them the very real risk of overstatement. But it remains the case that this is the way to experience a War on Drugs show. The songs that absolutely stun on the record are transformed into rambling, deconstructed jams; those that fail to shine on wax come to hold their own with the hits, more than justifying their positioning at the end of the set list.

The War on Drugs played, by my count, for something close to 90 minutes. Well before their set concluded at 1am, a glance behind me revealed that much of the crowd had filtered out, leaving the room half empty. Perhaps it was the late start, or maybe it was simply that, for this band, the ability to see the musicians up close, as I could, is instrumental to experiencing the performance in all its complexity. Whatever the case may be, it was a shame for those who left, and something special for those who stuck around. The band closed out with “A Needle in Your Eye,” a sprawling, rambling number that concisely represents all their various strengths, and then stumbled off stage, leaving a deafening screech of looped feedback in their wake. There was, refreshingly, no encore, perhaps because the layout of Bunk Bar doesn’t especially accommodate a band trying to move back and forth between stage and green room, but in any case the crowd didn’t need one. Word came down that the show was over, and the satisfied, exhausted crowd amiably filtered out, ears ringing but otherwise no worse for wear.

DOWNLOAD: The War on Drugs - Baby Missiles (MP3) or Follow us for more The War on Drugs MP3s (Twitter)

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