I spent yesterday relaxing in the city; walking around, record shopping, and seeing Vetiver’s in-store performance at Other Music before racing downtown for their show with Psychic Ills at Tonic.
An idea for a new game is: Try to hang out on the lower east side and not bump into VICE poster boy and part-time actor PJ Ransone. Also, the Culkin brothers and Mila Kunis walked past me down E. 4th Street and Lafayette. That might interest one or two of you. This concludes the celebrity gossip portion of the blog.
Vetiver’s in-store performance was quite enrapturing. Two acoustic guitars, an amplified bass, cello, violin, and a drummer using brushes on a cardboard box. Opened with a very pretty version of “Luna Sea,” and ran through “You May Be Blue,” “Idle Ties,” another song I didn’t recognize, an old folk cover and they closed with a nice version of “Down at El Rio.” Maybe thirty people showed up.
I raced over to Tonic and walked inside only to find out that the show was sold-out. I tried in vain to talk with the guy at the door, offering to leave after Psychic Ills, but he wasn’t biting. I figured I’d walk around outside chatting up folks, but less than a minute after I walked outside I was offered a ticket by a guy named Charles. He’d won two guest passes to the show from WFMU, but wasn’t planning on using the +1. I offered to pay him the cost of a ticket but he settled for the cost of a beer.
Psychic Ills used the second most effects boxes I’ve ever seen on a stage (the most being Bardo Pond). The main guitarist had almost an identical pedal board to mine (tuner, DOD250, Memory Man, reverb unit, BOSS distortion, Danelectro FabTone), but he had another board that was just for his vocal microphone and another contact microphone, and ran everything through a delay/sampler. The other guitarist had two huge cases of effects run through something in a thick black case I couldn’t see. Even the drummer had a multi-effects processor. The bassist also had a nicely rounded-out pedal board. As the band’s set started, the lights went down to almost zero visibility. I’ve never seen a darker stage. It’s not really like they needed to see what they were playing–after “Electric Life” they just freaked out for about forty minutes. At times, the pulsating amplifiers and thunderous drums had crowd members dancing along. It was about as impressive as the first time I saw Jackie-O Motherfucker. Not insanely loud, but really good and definitely trippy.
Vetiver played the most well-crafted set I’ve witnessed in a long time. It was something I wasn’t expecting. I like their self-titled album a lot and haven’t listened to the new one much. I don’t consider myself to be anything other than a casual fan, but I was amazed at the song choice and order. With seven musicians (the lineup changed with the inclusion of a third guitarist) clamoring for space on Tonic’s stage, Andy announced they were just going to wing it without sound-checking, and the septet dove into their first NYC show in two years. They started out almost excruciatingly slow with “Oh Papa,” followed by three soft, downtrodden tunes. Then they played a rousing version of “Luna Sea” that kicked the atmosphere up a notch, and the next three songs were all up-tempo folk rock songs that were very dynamic and got the whole room hollering and dancing. From then on they varied up the slow/fast numbers, highlighted by a huge version of “Red Lantern Girl” with a great noisy climax. The final tally was about 7 songs from the self-titled album, 7 from the new album, 2 covers (one of which was an awesome rendition of an Ian and Sylvia song).
After the show I spoke briefly to Vetiver’s drummer Otto and the two guitarists from Psychic Ills. Then I walked slowly back to my car and drove home. The end.
