The Bishop, for all of its cozy settings and craft beers on tap, can sometimes feel small and intimate enough to be nothing more than a big garage.
New Jersey's Screaming Females felt at home and all alone in their garage as they experimented and belted their loud punk rock Monday night, and there must've been at least a few audience members who forgot they weren't alone in their bedrooms as they thrashed about to their music.
Unfortunately, if the band really was alone in their virtual garage on stage, they certainly forgot there was an audience there watching them. The band poured through some deep cuts from their first two, lesser known albums and a few from their biggest and newest LP, 2010's Castle Talk, with barely a word to the audience.
Ultimately it was a powerful, but disappointingly brief set that clocked in at about 40 minutes and got me home before midnight.
Lead singer and guitarist Marissa Paternoster is the trio's only female, but she does enough screaming for them all. When her guitar isn't wailing, she is, and the two often go hand in hand.
But the typically pristine Bishop misplaced much of her vocals amidst the ensemble's sheer volume, enough to have still left my ears ringing.
Paternoster, a petite, dark-haired girl dressed in a dowdy black frock, still commands a lot of presence on stage and is the unequivocal heart of Screaming Females. She took more than a few liberties to play fast and ferocious guitar solos, showing how much of a beast she is with her axe.
But Screaming Females really shined when its members built off one another. Capable of jumping from grooving and aggressive breakdowns to the barn burner "Bell" off their third album, Power Move, they really showed their versatility. And Mike Rickenbacker's bouncy and rapid bass line on "Laura + Marty" provided precisely the smooth framework for Paternoster's subsequent noodling.
Still, what was missing was Screaming Females' chemistry with the audience and general sense of interest in actually being in a Midwestern town.
I saw that more in the opening groups, the first being the similar garage rock outfit Dead Dog. Hailing from Georgia, the peculiar trio accelerated through a half hour's worth of familiar and upbeat yet sloppy rock songs.
They were followed by the even stranger Underground Railroad to Candyland. At six pieces, Candyland is part punk, part Americana and a whole mess of ska, complete with a guy on tambourine, maracas, and trombone.
Three vocalists belted in unison songs about having a girl break up with you while riding a skateboard and going downtown to see birds leave. These guys clearly had a blast on stage, and so did the people who started a small hipster dance floor in the Bishop, if you're in to that sort of thing. I particularly wasn't.
Post and photography by Brian Welk
