The dark hovel with bear-smeared tabletops and single-bulbed wall lights on the corner of 3rd Street and South Jordan, known as Bear's Place, is the perfect venue for a band like Mobley that demands to be both seen and heard.

Although one may mistake the backroom of Bear's Place for a kind of underground rock garage, there's a distinct coziness about it made all the more poignant by its poor lighting, the bitter chills that would come sweeping in from outdoors, and the fact that the audience could boast no more than a dozen.

It didn't matter. Mobley, for anyone acquainted with this duo of hard-rocking indie Texans, was less a musical performance than it was the whole dynamic experience catered especially for the senses. It was the kind of performance you'd try to sit down with your beer to enjoy but for which you would end up standing up and then nodding your head in the pit; the kind of thing that you can see once and won't stop talking about for months.

What was most remarkable about Mobley was the band's ability to project a bigger atmosphere than there really was. Their onstage setup, for example, placed the drum set to the back left corner of the stage while the suave and GQ styled lead singer, Anthony Watkins, stacked double decker set of keys took center stage, and the tall and slightly grizzled Tim Shelburne maneuvered his own set of keys and instruments to the far right, where a Mac, plugged into a side monitor, played an accompanying slideshow to the tracks. Four more monitors behind the stage shone bright, intermittent static.

Small changes, but changes that nevertheless gave the venue an electronica feel, as though Watkins and Shelburne could at any moment dispense with the instruments and start disc scratching. While they did plenty of dispensing, it was to exchange guitars and basses to one another more; a trademark move of the duo that speaks well for the attitude of musical camaraderie. I'll scratch your frets if you'll scratch mine.

But musical camaraderie enjoyed its best representation with the climax of the night, "Seven Summers." Liken its ambience of light, carefree, almost childlike joy to MGMT's "Kids." Or maybe apply Mobley's own term, "sensuously minimalistic," because really, there was nothing more to it than an easy beat, plinking keys, and Watkins' faraway voice.

"Can you do me a favor...could you stand up, and come down to the pit," the vocalist asked shortly before "Seven Summers." The seats emptied into the room and Shelburne, looking unsure of himself, deposited a waist-high tom-tom on the ground and then began passing out drumsticks. There was a crackle of sticks on the edge of the drum as the song began; nothing more than a smattering of doubtful approval. The participating audience members exchanged dubious grins.

Unfazed, Watkins bowed over the pit, eyes closed in the ecstasy of his vocals while Shelburne swayed and nodded and beat his head to his keys. Mobley might have been playing in its own garage, making a sound that meant for the musicians and the musicians alone. Living for the moment of creating one's own sound and not giving give a damn if anyone listens. That's what makes Mobley's sound so delicious. The fact that they do give a damn about who listens is what made their show so unique.

And after four minutes, when "Seven Summers" was over, the twelve drumsticks were still hitting the tom-tom in time with one another, smacking away with abandon. Not giving a damn if anyone listened.

Post by Brandon Cook

Comments powered by Disqus