When one is able to observe a significant amount of performers outside of their element, it becomes easy to pick up on the habits. Most of them have toddler OCD and can't bear to sit still unless they're playing their instruments; when they attempt they often look uncomfortable, bored, and contemplative all at the same time, and generally break the trend for a cigarette break.
What's interesting is that even an atmosphere like Rachael's with its Japanese lanterns and the faded yolk-yellow decor, and the classical music that gives the single room the vibe of a fireside chat, can prove overbearing. It's in this silent comfort that the night's musicians were most uncomfortable, and it wasn't until patrons and regulars began to fill the room and talk amiably about the weekend's shroom shenanigans that pig-tailed and plaid Taylor Campy breathed easy and shook herself from her quiet spell. She mounted the stage with her acoustic and then all noises but the water heater dropped into nothing, as if a punch had knocked the breath from the voices. It wasn't a punch, but the flickering tones of Campy's guitar, lulling into lullaby.
Frail and soft, passing like rain and peppered with an occasional sibilance, Campy's voice was ethereal and lingering. To match, her lyrics were grimly fatalistic and charged with virginal emotional trauma (her first two numbers were written when she was 16 and 17). Intensity was measured with lyrical drama: "run, Sun God, run," paired with the dulcet mood crafted by finger plucking. The crowd regarded serenely and with dizzied eyes.
Despite the emotional cultivation of her lyrics, Campy was deceptively charming and clearly nervous when she attempted crowd banter between songs. "And so, here's another song...really?" she said to herself at one point; after accidentally maneuvering her amplifier she giggled shakily "I'm Taylor Campy, and I fuck shit up!"
Perhaps the songs were a little heavy in content for a Homecoming Week performance. Regardless Campy summoned a spectrum of emotions, from the moralistic self-introspective to the inwardly warming. "Apparently I've been doing things all wrong," she sang, "I'm supposed to put makeup on when I wake up...but I always forget."
Her followers, the three-piece suit Hop Along, weren't able to inspire the experience of Campy's gentle foreboding and somber societal criticism.
Instead, the experience was love at first sight.
Take, for example, the way that vocalist Frances Quinlan performed her sound check. Contrary the musicians who tap the microphone with a tentative finger and recite "check," Quinlan burst into the routine with a heady vocal: "Cheeeeck. CHEEeeeeeeeeck. CHEE-EEEE-EEEECK!!" And with a riff the band launched into an energetic melody that was only an extension to the same sound check. So it goes. Though I had listened for hours to the band's newly released LP, these were the sort of endearing antics that Spotify or Myspace music simply couldn't accord.
Hop Along sounds like a garage band that's evolved into a master class; the music still punches and the power chords are beefy, but the vocal leaps are fluid and look easy (though sound appropriately strained) and the guitar knows when to assert itself and when it's not needed. Moreover Hop Along can manage every element of teenage garage punk and still manage to sound happy, or at worst, neutral. Tortured vocals don't necessary equate with heartbreak and rage; frustrated inexpression and boundless positive energy are equally viable candidates. And Quinlan has a fantastic ability to construe her screams into different pitches, to the point where a simple and honest scream differs completely from a tangled throat moan.
Being able to pull off self-contradiction is Hop Along's most impressive ability as a band. The listener has painful vocal crackles that he cannot help but smile at and nod his heads to; once the screams subside into shrill lyrics, what's being sung mirrors precisely to what the crowd is reacting: "With you, I got to be young and HA-PPY!" (The tune is aptly named "Young and Happy!")
There's so much to love about a performance like this aside from just the music. Unlike most yell-heavy female vocalists, Quinlan radiated charisma and smiles whenever she drove home another of her screams. Rachael's Cafe goers recognized the talent and poured out on Thursday night in surprisingly large numbers for support.
Unfortunately, with four gigs crammed into a single evening, the setlist was a short one and the performers bowed out humbly to their successors. However even with only 45 minutes, Hop Along scratched themselves indelibly onto this musical mark as well as onto this particular listener.
Post by Brandon Cook
