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Live Review: Wavves, These Are Powers, Vampire Hands @ The Market Hotel (2009.03.28)

wavves-2Photo credit: Tom Pavlich

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MP3: Vampire Hands – Opium Typhoon

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MP3: So Wavves – Bored (Anamanaguchi cover)

Being a Baltimore-based college student living in New York, I’d like to take some time to walk through a few of the differences I’ve noticed between shows in New York and Baltimore. In my relatively meager experience with the two, I’ve noticed that Baltimore’s dancing tends to be more self-satisfying. The wild jittering and jumping involved at concerts in our fair city serves a whole different purpose than in New York or Brooklyn. Baltimore’s dancing is more inward-based. You’re bouncing ecstatically, shaking your head from side to side pretending you’re insane…it’s all for you. Every single person in front of the stage looks stupid, and nobody cares even a little bit.

Brooklyn shows, however, utilize dancing in a whole different way. I arrived at the so-DIY-you-can’t-find-it Market Hotel last Saturday night to a packed room of youngin’s collaborating in clusters of 2-5. While they existed in groups, it was easy to see that the hipsters were (comically) more self-attentive than they were involved in their respective circles. This apparent self-obsession was the first negative foreshadowing of how these New Yorkers work at indie concerts.

Vampire Hands’ unfamiliar presence took the stage at the crack of 9:30. They consisted of a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist, and a dude who sang while he messed with some looping tools and circuit-bent electronics. Aside from reminding me that standar guitar/bass/keyboard/drums bands still exist in this ever nonconforming world, they also brought a couple of really great tunes. Read the rest…

Album Review: Wavves – Wavvves (Fat Possum)

wavvves

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MP3: Wavves – So Bored

Noise music doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Maybe I’ve been reading too much existential philosophy, but I’ve come to the realization that noise isn’t something a person can understand. Upon full comprehension of the music, you humanize it; you make it your own. You make it something that it’s not.

Noise music is irrational; it’s not supposed to make sense. Once you can claim to know it, you’ve gone about understanding something other than what the sound waves dictate. In this way, noise is something that us logic-bound humans can’t ever truly “get.” It’s beyond me how the stuff gets made; perhaps an absurd mental fixation is what causes a musician to create, or maybe some dude just records whatever sounds “cool” in his basement and then releases it. I’ll probably never find out for sure. I’ve never liked things that I can’t wholly comprehend, and that’s why I’m baffled by the satisfaction I gain while listening to this latest trend: noise-pop.

Wavves are the most recent subject of this ever-fickle hipster favoritism complex. Read the rest…