(A brief pair of asides before we begin, which I hope will be forgiven due to their nature, being inherently helpful for the reader and hopefully offering up the exposition necessary to offset any discomfort said reader may encounter upon being confronted with a somewhat outside-the-norm concert review: For aside number one, it is perhaps best, to avoid the aforementioned discomfort, to consider the following as more of a vague recounting of an event, rather than a true concert review; as it was originally intended to be merely an enjoyable evening for myself, it was not approached with a critical mindset, and, as such, commonalities such as set lists and full band member names will not be found here. Which is not to say one will not gain insight into what the performance was like — which is, after all, the main intent of a show review. Indeed, perhaps it is even more accurate and truthful a representation, as intimate shows and independent acts often play to strange audiences whom know little to nothing of their work. Which is a nice segue to aside number two. In the spirit of full disclosure, a spirit I have not had to evoke for quite some time, I must admit I know all of the following acts, having gone to college with them and, I am fairly certain, being the first person to approach them critically while surveying the university’s local music scene. Please bear in mind I am a professional, however, and whatever positivity or condemnation one may find below is applied as fairly as it possibly can be.)
If you are of the persuasion that finds solace, excitement, and existential acknowledgment in the brushing up against — and light brushing, at that — of nominal danger, if you are the kind to live vicariously through James Bond and Ernest Hemingway and Doc Savage, et al., may I suggest to you staring down a rampaging fire truck while helpless in a bus seat for fulfilling your needs? It is far more dangerous than living through media, but quite a bit less dangerous than, say, something with actual danger in it, and it is just the right amount of terrifying and awe inspiring to create those rare, elastic moments in time, the moments that drip like syrup, elongate, stretch, before snapping back to full speed with only the tremors and tics of your nervousness remaining.
In that moment I saw the great engine bearing down upon me like a screaming Behemoth, wailing and pummeling with guttural grunts, brilliant white pupils with wild red irises, gleaming metal fangs and flared white phosphorus nostrils barreling towards me, held helpless in the intersection, a sacrifice to the machine, which, undaunted in pursuit of its prey, continued upon its furious pace with such decidedly suicidal intent that the entire bus clenched and froze and gritted their teeth, watching pitifully out the windows, until it came screeching, almost to a halt, and ducked around our tails as the bus found the room it needed to maneuver forward.
That bus gave way to another, more forgiving bus, which gave way to the intersection of Chicago and Damen, which in turn gave way to the warm embrace of finding fellow Western New York transplants tucked amid the quickly gentrifying corners of the West Side. They were here to play a gallery opening, occupying a space of floor in the front of the gallery, Paperish Mess, where passers by would stop and stare at each act as it played, the acts being Mothers, which consisted of singer/guitarist Joe, Space Cubs, the second faux plural, and headliner Mr. Boneless, an act of which Joe is again a part (busy evening for Joe).
The gallery was lined with various pieces of what I will call commercial art, for lack of a better term and not to be confused with something more in line with graphic/industrial design, but in this context the smaller, more affordable populist art works that are too fine and baroque to be considered “crafts,” but not as fine as what hung in the pack of the show, Skin and Bones, a series of masterfully done, photo-realistic oils by Ian Reynold. The paintings’ photographic qualities went beyond the obvious, including their portrait nature, composition, and dark, saturated air to something I found to be most impressive: their texture. Being the kind of person who finds great pleasure in getting so close to the works as to see the way the strokes are applied to the canvas, I was taken by how impossibly smooth the paint was; it was like they had been chemically developed or screened on to the linen. It stuck with me for hours, how the paintings could be so hauntingly real looking, yet exist so flat and perfect as to seem decidedly unreal.
Adding to the surreal qualities of the art was the fact that many of the paintings, with their cigarette pale and couture slim models, could have easily been mirrors for the crowd who had come to see them, a crowd of kohl eyes and blood-stained lips, of patterns, intricate patterns, in tattoos, on shirts, composing stockings and tights and leggings, all of whom found their surreality augmented by not only my halazone mood upon being surrounded by Buffalonians, but by the soundtrack that scored them.
Mothers opened, and played the score to the Firetruck Moment, mournful, lingering guitar. The best way to describe how Mothers played would be crestfallen, but purely in the aesthetic sense; while the songs did indeed carry a dispirited air, it was Mothers’ physical form, languishing, melting, working the guitar like a man suffering from exsanguination, that causes the word “crestfallen” to come to mind. In what would be a recurring theme throughout the show — the bands are related by physical location and personal circumstance, not style — Space Cubs effectively cleared the air and bent the gallery towards her own whims, which consist of atmospheric, plush, cold drones, composed of seafoams and purples, and accessible dance inducing drums cut through by vocals, both clean and lacquered; this was juxtaposed against Mothers’ slothful — that is complimentary — performance by Space Cubs’ need to constantly tweak and manipulate her pads, keys, and computer and be able to dance while doing so.
Like a properly dosed drug trip, the show crescendoed into Mr. Boneless, whose driving abrasiveness — once again, complimentary — would have fit better, in spirit, with Mothers, but would have been brutally jarring without Space Cubs’ coddling of the audience into a state properly prepared for what was to come upon them. Prepared or not, the crowd reacted tentatively at first to Boneless, standing back and observing, from a safe distance, this unhinged creature, Bat Country rock whose heavily rhythmic sensibilities are composed of deceptively intricate guitar, bass, and percussion parts, all of which get overshadowed by the bone splintering wails, yelps, and growls of lead Elliot Darling, who rightfully castigated, in the most congenial sense of the word, the audience for its complacency.
A cover of “Love Cats” brought the stragglers in to slaughter, and those who had been hanging back, keeping themselves at arm’s length from the admittedly intimidating Darling, began to slowly inch in towards what Boneless was creating. The energy, which had been running high in the band mates, with Joe a seemingly different man from Mothers, drummer Brian a Charybdis-like mess in the corner, and bassist Nate, pale, shallow chest, like one of Reynold’s subject’s, on display dancing feverishly, seeped like blood into the crowd, who, despite never matching it, did indeed seem won over by the end.
The challenge of providing art of enough substance in the front of the house to complement what was hanging in the back was met and exceeded, and I must admit I gained a sense of vindication seeing acts I had championed years ago living and breathing outside of the fishbowl, confirming that what had seemed so great at the time translated now, pounding coffin nails into the blond hardwood gallery floor and leaving one bathed in howling oils and metaphorical impressions.
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B. David Zarley is a freelance writer based in Chicago. You can find him on Twitter @BDavidZarley.