With a price that was right and in a locale that has never disappointed to defy good taste or tip its swim cap to the surreal, Built to Spill played next to the Cyclone at the Coney Island Village Voice Siren Festival last night as the annual free music festival’s main stage headliner.
They were scheduled to go on at 7:30 PM, but I didn’t arrive till near to 8. After pushing through the crowd for a city block or more, I settled at a spot near the sound booth and watched the veterans push out noise that wended through wavy gravy jams stuck to the powerful, puncturing, penetrating indie guitar fury and whining vocal keen that has been the trademark of Doug Martsch and company’s Boise, ID outfit since 1992. In no exact order and without pretension to completeness, I include above a few of the songs I enjoyed during the show.
The only comment Martsch made during the show seemed to be in reference to a tantrum or posture thrown or posed by one of the day’s other performers, the Raveonettes. “We’re not the Raveonettes, we’re not angry about anything. We’re just trying to concentrate on playing songs and having a good time.”
I wasn’t witness to said showboating, much to my ineluctable happiness. I got what I came for- unassuming honesty and the joyous display of hard-won, well earned chops from a band whose critical ethos is present lyrically, sonically, and performatively. Never an image-based band, they will never have to demand any kind of fealty to their celebrity or perform antics befitting the false glamor of the stage to remain great.
A line from “Big Dipper” has always made me laugh:
I thought I bored me, but I learned to think like you/Now nothing bores me that that’s nothing is thought through
By remaining a band that has defied conventional wisdom (“in a world that’s just so unconventional”), Built to Spill is still carrying the torch, carrying through, still accountable to themselves, remaining human among so much Twitter-ready shit and garbage.
During the solo on “Carry the Zero,” a fireworks display lit up the sky to the right of the stage. It likely originated from the Brooklyn Cyclones’ stadium where Wilco and Yo La Tengo played a show last week and was unrelated to the moment two to three solid blocks of living human meat and I were having with one of the greatest bands of the past twenty years, but, sandwiched there between the clack and screams of the Cyclone on one side and the pyrotechnics arcing into the sky on the other with the music the binding miasma between, I felt a religious certainty that all events up to that moment had only been arranged just so to wake us all into last night’s swaying dream of sound and idea.
that sounds pretty awesome.
last saw b2s in paris, when they were playing “perfect from now on” in its entirety.
never ones to disappoint, for the encore they closed on a jam freakout based on mia’s “paper planes”…
They played a lot of more recent stuff for this show, but still hit a lot of the high notes from There’s Nothing Wrong with Love and Keep it Like a Secret. There were a couple of weird jams from the more recent records thrown in there that I wouldn’t have expected, but Raps told me that this whole tour they’re on now was playlisted by fan request. I guess this means that newer fans haven’t cozied up to the deep cuts and essentials of the back catalog. I can listen to There’s Nothing Wrong with Love every day of the year, so I’m not complaining.
By the way, that encore sounds awesome.