the espresso in my coffee at about 5:30 kept me up a little later, and i consequently slept in for much of the day saturday. i expected to get rained out, too. it wasn't until close to 19:00 that i convinced myself i could get out on time.

so, i took a heavier than usual pre-drink and made it to phog for about 22:00, hoping i wasn't going to miss the early band, which ended up playing late.

i did no research into the headliner, and wasn't even sure i'd stay to catch it; they came on, first, around 23:00. that's one thing about phog: they don't play early there. you won't miss the set, if you're a little late. they had a stand-up bassist and a drummer with a small kit, leading me to think it would be some kind of jazz, but they were fronted by a cowboy in jeans doing jangly country music on an acoustic. they may cringe at that, but so be it. again: my first thought was "yikes. this competent rhythm section should really find a sexy, black female vocalist to front itself. send this guy back to the farm. ouch.", but it started to make a little more sense after the first couple of songs. i overheard them talking outside, and they were name-dropping jeff tweedy (of wilco), silver jews and some other stuff that i'm vaguely aware of but just don't ever listen to. so, in the sense that it was completely wrong, it sort of made sense. i'm not convinced that it was compelling, exactly, but i'll give them some space for being bloody weird.

it didn't capture me, though, and i snuck out halfway through the set, to go over to the other bar to see if i could sneak in on a joint, which did happen. we had a nice little talk about death, where i managed to clearly boggle them, as i explained to them how the acceptance of death is healthy, how sin is a childish concept that should be abolished (and that i'm actually not at all interested in replacing a collectivist concept of sin with an individualistic concept of one - no, that's not enough, sin needs to be intellectually dismantled and discarded altogether in order to prevent it from stunting our potential and limiting our progress), how religion is only universal because it's the easiest and least challenging approach and some other equally heavy shit, before abruptly ducking out.

"i don't want to miss the band i came to see."

and, i didn't.

i was expecting a drummer, and a bit of a louder presentation. they presented themselves as a kind of a shoegaze act, and very much sound that way if you check out their bandcamp site. but, i didn't check the fine print - they were using a drum machine. so, you're looking at a guitar/bass two piece act, and it kind of fell apart in the process.

it's not like you can't be a two piece with a drum machine - it's possible to do compelling music that way. but, there are certain types of genres that sort of require a live drummer, and noisey-shoegaze is really one of them, because it's so fundamental to breaking through the feedback. when you rob this kind of band of a live drum sound, it tends to rather quickly get muddy and aimless, no matter how exciting the guitarist and/or bassist is. further, you have to take control of your instruments or vocals to compensate - something neither of them seemed interested in doing.

if you're going to bother trying to perform live as a two-piece with a drum machine, it's probably a better idea to try and do something a little more ambient, something that doesn't rely so much on the dynamics of the drum parts. that means delving into the sonic possibilities of your guitar, it means focusing more on interesting bass patterns, it means slowing the temp down a little and it means relying more on the voice as an instrument. they didn't exactly fail at this - they had moments where they clicked - but there were too many moments where the sound was clearly relying on a drum machine section that didn't cut through the mix.

it's not so easy as to tell them to find a drummer - i'd rather encourage them to open up their sound, and make use of what they have rather than pretend they're something they're not.

by the end of it, i'd had six beers in four hours (after a heavy pre-drink to start), and it was best for me to just get home and make some eggs and get to sleep.