It has really only occurred to me now, having just returned from a three outfit punk/screamo mash-up, drenched in sweat (product of an unseasonably summery night and a defective air conditioner) and sipping a Guinness, that I know next to nothing about the music I have dwelt with the past two hours. Sure, like the rest of the populace that that were once middle schoolers, I too once (and still do) iPod-dabbled in the hollering vocals of Three Days Grace, Bullet for my Valentine, and Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, among others, for nothing more than a nice screech. But the Rachael's Cafe performers were equipped for something reaching far beyond what I had indulged in six years ago. Rachael's decor was of a demonic faux-Bender superseded on the amplifier, a duct-taped 'Fuck' on the drum-set, several dozen fans outside biding the pre-grunging wait with Parliaments (or, if someone was willing to break a five, Camel Crushes).
Having gone to my fair share of punk concerts, I was fairly accustomed to the heavier beat of the hanging toms or the liberal whacks paid to the splash cymbals, and yet the shrill wails of the vocalist (who sported a wicked set of dreads and a sick mustache) for the opening performance Bad Creeps caught me somewhat by surprise. What is there to make of stage stomping and hair thrashing when the music seems only to be exercising amp limits and eardrum tolerance? Surprisingly much I found out later, when I overcame my emo ignorance and my search for theme and continuity and instead focused on the spectacle itself; the battle between voice and instrument, pervading thrash metal against the rage of the easily subdued humanity.
As I watched (and strained), I began to understand screamo in terms of the Slipknot quasi-motto "People equal shit." Within the boundaries of such raw catharsis, it was crudely poignant, symbolizing the path of realization, from recognition of self- worthlessness, one's fleeting sanity, and finally to the bitter aftermath of discordant and discombobulated sound and fury--sound and fury, which, my pedantic self might add, signified nothing (or very little; the penultimate track "Raping Pussy" obviously signifying something).
It was a lot to take in in thirty humid minutes, and with the summer stifle still bearing down I sought to remedy the heat with a second cup of coffee and a free (courtesy of the Bad Creeps) cupcake. Citycop, a four-piece ensemble with astoundingly inkless forearms and no stage ornamentation, took final cigarette breaks and mounted the stage. Their opening was a muffled angst poem, almost like something out of LA's Suicidal Tendencies, peppered with a bit of acoustic and a lingering amplifier drone. The riff was catchy, that is before it gave away to a burst of thrash-thunder, synchronized head banging, and full body forward thrusts. However, Citycop made a fine distinction between noise and music. They chose to keep their acoustics instead of trading them in for the much more amorphous wall of sound. The screams were delivered with abdominal force rather than nasally whine. There was even something like a love lost (or perhaps, love betrayed) scream narrative could even be detected beneath the layers of tumult and discord. The sweet melody of the opening acoustics came to signify the relationship; its downward progression came in the rage melodics and the doleful acoustic motif, both of which intensified as passions and emotions accentuated and culminated into the climax of the vocalist buckling under his own ardor and crumpling to his knees, wailing his hoarse Weltschmertz into the ground. It was to Citycop's credit that they still managed to accelerate their vehemence from this point of exhaustion. Drumsticks were shattered. Microphones were hurled. Naked fists punched the air until the very atmosphere seemed bruised and bloodied.
Citycop's solid screams and withering thrash would have made a good conclusion to the night's performances, yet there was still more to be had. Pessoa, four smiling, sweating, rather drunk performers provided big noise as well as a sort of lyrical vocal masochism with foot-stamping fun. Yet rather than delve for musical meaning and let my whole night's notions of screamo/punk be thrown off tilt by this rare display of dulcet consciousness (what constitutes lyrical fury, anyway?), I preferred to enjoy Pessoa in terms of their technical brilliance, and their not-quite-hopeless stage-pummeling abandon. They were the middle ground that separated reckless emotionality from constraint. Rather than deplorably pessimistic, Pessoa's sound was for a life that was, like the title to one of their set pieces, simply alright. It wasn't raw expressionism, but it was enough to propel the audience into swinging convulsions, hair flips, and even smiles. "Power Indie" is how Pessoa labels their genre on their Facebook page, with surprisingly no mention of screamo or punk. Yet with the command to simultaneously subdue and engage their audience, their self-proclaimed power is entirely appropriate.
Post by Brandon Cook
