CMJ: Saturday [Marc Hogan]

Spoon photos by Jason Bergman; AAM Promo day party photos by Ryan Muir; Above: Spoon

The Ponys [Roseland Ballroom; 7:30 p.m.]

Chicago-based four-piece the Ponys might sound like the kind of band that could succeed in a 3,000-plus-capacity room like Roseland, especially on this year's streamlined, consistent Turn the Lights Out. Three albums in, these guys have their live moves down, and their hazy, no-frills indie rock-- Pitchfork's Jason Crock approvingly dubbed it "Sonic Youth Lite"-- seems melodic enough to serve as a gateway to noisier stuff for Spoon's growing fanbase of skirt-chasers and frat boys. It wasn't, however, and it wasn't only the frat boys' fault. Singer/guitarist Jered Gummere's narcoticized murmurs were muddy and indecipherable, and there was a rote detachment to even the too-brief squalls of guitar noise. Maybe, a couple of weeks into their tour with Spoon, the Ponys are beginning to expect a listless audience-- and playing accordingly. "A few more and then Spoon's on," Gummere announced to the biggest cheers of the set. "They're OK, I guess."

Spoon [Roseland Ballroom; 8:30 p.m.]

It's a good time to be a scalper at a sold-out Spoon show. The dudes prowling 52nd Street before the Austin band's Roseland gig were turning would-be buyers away by the taxi-full if they weren't willing to cough up obscene prices. And many were. A half-an-hour before Spoon were officially set to start, one scalper told me he'd sold a ticket for as much as $60, and based on what I overheard, he might not even have been bullshitting. A couple of college-age guys who'd already bought tickets and been thrown out for fake IDs didn't even bother haggling-- they were literally pleading with the man to sell for what they had left in their wallets.



Spoon themselves have achieved a masterful balance between what those guys probably like-- beer, classic rock-- and what I like. It's going to become a precarious position to maintain as their fanbase grows and the media attention increases whenever they put out their next album, but on latest effort Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the veteran four-piece achieve an expertly calibrated combination of gorgeous experimentation and upbeat, accessible romanticism, sounding as Billy Joel these days as Pixies. Judging by applause levels, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was what many in the thousands-strong crowd were at Roseland to hear.

They got it, and a bit of back catalogue as well, in a concise, electrifying set. I haven't been to a venue this big in a while, so the instant weed smoke during opening song "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" was good for an inward chuckle. The three-piece horn section on new songs like "Cherry Bomb" or Kill the Moonlight's "Jonathan Fisk" gave the songs a trebly punch, but both songs were uptempo rockers-- music more for fist-pumping and beer-drinking than stoned navel-gazing.





Spoon never let the audience get too comfortable, though. Britt Daniel's hoarse bark went through even the breeziest arrangements, such as in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga standout "The Underdog". The Radiohead-like "The Ghost of You Lingers" received perhaps the most muted reaction of the night, but the big-venue sound system helped its percussive glitches hit us in the guts after the pulsing synths put us at ease. On "I Turn My Camera On", one of several songs included from 2005's underrated Gimme Fiction, Daniel swapped shouts for falsetto coos, with bassist Rob Pope underpinning some Prince-ly funk. And many of the songs had discordant but economical guitar solos, which Daniel sometimes played with the instrument outstretched and held vertically, like a trophy.

Not that the show was ever flashy or indulgent. Daniel even kept the stage patter to a minimum, finally breaking his silence nearly halfway into the set in order to praise Spoon's label, Merge. I think he later called the show Spoon's biggest ever, though my ears may have missed a qualifying word. When the encore began, Daniel seemed truly impressed by the size of the crowd reaction. "That was a roar," he said tersely. A song later, he reached back to Girls Can Tell for "Everything Hits at Once", finishing the night with Gimme Fiction's "My Mathematical Mind".

"And when you believe, they call it rock and roll," Daniel sang earlier in the night, on "The Beast and the Dragon Adored" (also from Gimme Fiction). As he repeated the phrase, the words "rock and roll" became distorted by tinny echoes, moving from a traditional rock outlook recalling the Lovin' Spoonful to the weirder, wider musical universe also covered by this site. A guy I talked to before the set told me his favorite artists included Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty-- "The stuff our parents used to listen to was actually pretty good," he said. Spoon's challenge going forward will be satisfying both this guy and the guys who also appreciate some weirdness. Tonight, they did both.

A Place to Bury Strangers [The Delancey; 11 p.m.]

A Place to Bury Strangers weren't "the loudest band in New York" this night, as other press outlets and the band's MySpace page proclaim. They might've been the most punctual, though. The industrial-tinged Brooklyn dream-pop three-piece didn't deafen me the way even the piped-in music at the Annex before Black Kids did a couple of evenings ago, but they started (and ended) so promptly that I only caught one-sixth of their six-song set. Not sure how well you know New York geography, but suffice it to say it's a long way from 52nd and Broadway to Delancey St. and the Williamsburg goddamn Bridge. Not their fault.

At least the song I caught was "Ocean", the last track from A Place to Bury Strangers' self-titled debut, and a song that lives up to its title in its immersive vastness. "It's love that controls you," the frontman, Death By Audio chief, and ex-Skywave singer Oliver Ackermann intoned, not exactly with perfect pitch and perhaps a bit too high in the mix. Jay Space's drumming seemed as important as the swirling-but-not-deafening maelstrom of guitar effects, toms bashing all over the beat while the bass drum kept a steady, physical undercurrent.

Eventually, it was an extra burst of percussion that announced the guitars were about to get quite a bit louder. And they did, a piercing ring shining out above Ackermann's squealing, gnashing, vomiting mid-level tones. OK, pretty loud, I guess. Oh yeah, the performance was backed by a black-and-white film projection showing men and women running around in circles in what looked like a game of "Ring Around the Rosie" played in the fiery depths of hell.

AAM Promo Day Party [Music Hall of Williamsburg]

Oh No! Oh My!




Mika Miko




Islands




Will Sheff




...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead

CMJ: Saturday [Zach Baron]

Photos by Kathryn Yu; Above: Jesu

New Violators [Mercury Lounge; 7 p.m.]

The New Violators' straightforwardness and honesty of intention-- they are an arena-sized band, in love with Bowie and the Cure and Echo & the Bunnymen and Springsteen and maybe even U2-- has had the paradoxical effect of alienating many who have seen them at South by Southwest, CMJ, and in their own hometown of Trondheim, Norway. Chalk this up, in part, to the band's frontman, Per Borten-- tall, handsome, well dressed, distant, and over the top.

Recently, the New Violators parted ways with their longtime guitarist, and Borten has since assumed double duty, a brilliant idea-- what little they lose in towering stage presence and theatrical appeal, they gain by being tighter, more locked in, less polarizing. Their new songs rely less on Borten's croon and more on his considerable songwriting ability. The material is more ballady; keyboards play more of a role, and the songs are longer and more complex, the influences still there but less obvious. If Springsteen's Americana leanings have come into vogue as an influence and a touchstone for so many new bands, New Violators cop the thing from Springsteen that attracted everyone to him in the first place: huge ambition and blatantly outsized songs.

I will resort to begging: somebody, please, put out this band's record.

Torche [Blender Theatre at Gramercy; 9 p.m.]

The Miami, Fla., quartet Torche-- say "Torch," that's what they do-- emerged from the rubble of Floor, an on-and-off Florida band renowned in some circles for their long-unreleased LP, Dove, recorded in 1994. Floor's legend circulated for some time before the band had a record out-- an oversight they remedied in 2001, when they released a self-titled album and then, eventually, Dove. After their 2004 breakup, those two records came to bookend the existence of a band few outside of Florida were aware of until they were almost finished. Torche formed shortly afterward, filling the void.







At the Gramercy, the band took the stage under the theater's busy light show, pounding away at a deafening single chord. The venue was packed-- a reminder that though certain bands may dominate all discussions of the festival, a journeyman metal group has a much easier time piecing a crowd together than does your average internet phenom. Like Floor, the band vibes Jane's Addiction as much as any other heavy predecessor-- angelic, soaring vocals, mountains of dialed-up guitars, a deliberate pace, and long, ocean-sized songs. Though Jesu was likely the band people had come to see, it was Torche that had most of the crowd bending rhythmically at the waist and neck, swaying as if in prayer.

Jesu [Blender Theatre at Gramercy; 10 p.m.]

Justin Broadrick's obsession with the non-metal aspects of his band's sound-- the suicidal wistfulness, silky drones and muted vocals-- has spilled over into his band's live set: "Turn everything up! It's too fucking quiet," yelled a surprisingly audible audience dude.





Lifeline, Broadrick's latest, suffered a bit from being so straightforward: without multiple layers to sift through, Jesu can sound thin, or underwritten. Live, it's clear that Broadrick is experimenting, seeing how light a touch he can employ and still make crowds feel the weight; still, after Torche's pummeling stand, it was odd to hear people's random chatter crest over the music. Like many other moments at CMJ, the whole thing was a little too transparent-- after seeing so much industry in motion, you begin wish someone would just drop the curtain again.

CMJ: Saturday [Amy Phillips]

Photos by William Kirk; Above: Band of Horses

Justice [Terminal 5; 9 p.m.]


As Justice's current tour made its way across North America over the past few weeks, reader emails bearing tales of mayhem hit Pitchfork's inbox. Rowdy mosh pits, fights, and collapsing stage-front barricades seem to follow Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay wherever they go, as our continent goes crazy for the MTV-approved Frenchmen bearing Brontosaurus riffs and caveman beats.

So when the tour hit Terminal 5 last night, I expected mass fainting, orgies, speaking in tongues. At least a little bloodshed. Well, the sold-out crowd was pumped, but not that pumped. There was a bit of pushing and lots of jumping up and down and headbanging, but no stage-diving or crowd-surfing or circle pits or anything like that. Honestly, people went crazier for M.I.A. the night before.



Regardless, Justice themselves seemed pretty stoked, or as stoked as two dudes dressed in black leather with cigarettes perpetually dangling from their lips will allow themselves to appear. But they're still just a couple guys fiddling with electronics from behind a big glowing cross. Not much to look at. No space pyramid or robot costumes or lasers or insane light show-- though the lighting guy did seem overly fond of strobes.



Augé and de Rosnay let the music provide the pyrotechnics. Tracks like "Waters of Nazareth", "Let There Be Light", and "Stress" sound great on headphones, but they're beyond massive when blasting from a killer soundsystem. Justice retained their playful side, teasing "D.A.N.C.E." throughout the night and throwing Soulwax's "NY Excuse", Klaxons' "Atlantis to Interzone", and even Metallica's "Master of Puppets" in the mix.



Terminal 5, basically a big steel cage, is perfect for an act like Justice. Where better to experience their music than a sexy jail? (Yes, I know the answer: a church. Har har.) And when the concert experience is more about watching the crowd than the performers, the venue's two-tiered balcony is perfect for viewing the main floor.

Although Terminal 5 has a capacity of 3,000, due to its narrowness it feels quite intimate. That intimacy was magnified a thousandfold during "We Are Your Friends", as the crowd chanted the chorus together in a big moment of bonding. Justice cut the music away, so that it was just one big happy chant. It was so much fun, people couldn't resist starting up again when the show was over.

Band of Horses [Bowery Ballroom; 12 a.m.]


Pretty much any venue that isn't out on a big, open prairie or carved into the side of a mountain probably isn't the perfect setting to see Band of Horses. Their wide, sky-scraping songs are made for the great outdoors. But festival season is over, and I'm not heading to the Gorge or Red Rocks any time soon, so a dark, packed club on the Lower East Side will have to do.





Luckily, lead Horseman Ben Bridwell's songs are strong enough to transcend setting, especially when he and his band are in a good mood like they were last night. Bridwell adores the Bowery Ballroom, as he repeatedly reminded us, and adores his label, Sub Pop, who the band honored with a mid-set toast.

The positive vibes seeped into Band of Horses' mellower, sadder songs, giving them a warm fuzzy feel, and amped up the rocking ones. Although Bridwell's lap steel remained on stage throughout the set, he only played a few songs sitting down. Mostly he stood, rocking out with fist in the air or hands demurely behind his back, that ever-flowing beard getting more impressive every day. He was especially excited to play a classic rawk double-neck guitar, which sounded as beautiful as it looked silly.



I like the new Band of Horses album Cease to Begin a whole lot. I think they make a helluva good country-rock band. And tunes like "Is There a Ghost", "Islands on the Coast", and "Ode to LRC" held their own against Everything All the Time's gems. The band was clearly stoked to play the new songs, and that excitement was palpable.

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