Under the headline: “37 Record-Store Clerks Feared Dead In Yo La Tengo Concert Disaster”, the story further teased that “also believed to be among the missing are seven freelance rock critics, five vinyl junkies, two 'zine publishers, an art-school dropout, and a college-radio DJ.”
Multiply the Onion’s clichés by a couple of hundred, add many more beards, caps, glasses and ironic tees and one comes satisfyingly close to describing the Commodore’s audience on this particular Saturday night. Nothing excites a crowd of obsessive post-rock music nerds like a double bill featuring the elder statesmen of the genre and their opening act, a duo of knob-twiddling uber-distortionists. Want loud? Want fuzzy? Want experimental? Check. Check. And more check.
F*ck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
Indeed, the arrival of the UK’s F*ck Buttons on North American soil had the High Fidelity set buzzing. Benjamin John Power and Andrew Hung are have been causing a cult-sized stir among the Pitchfork ilk with their ear-shattering electromagnetic fuzz, and are obviously having a time of it on this tour. In fact, Mogwai and FB go back a bit - M’s John Cummings recorded FB’s latest disc, Street Horrrsing and FB did a cover of “Mogwai Fear Satan”. Happy, dysfunctional families, then.
Live, FB’s sound can only be described as “difficult” - though for some, this is a bonus.
The gradual build of bombast on tracks like “Sweet Love for Planet Earth”, “Bright Tomorrow” and “Ribs Out” start out promisingly but ultimately drop off the sequencer-holding table ledge. Apparently it’s about the layers with FB.
As one fan explained, “Even though their songs don’t really go anywhere, they’re still minimalist and cool. And I like that.” Fair play. But if you can’t hear the layers and are distracted by Power’s unintelligible gobbing into a plastic mic and Hung jumping around maniacally, are they still layers or just noise?
The jury might just be out on that.
Scotland's Post-Rock Messiahs
Mogwai, on the other hand, can never be accused of wasting layers. Formed in 1995, this Scottish five-piece have perfected the art of music that is both enormous and sparse. Beautiful, sorrowful, droney instrumentals trade space with heavy distortion, guitars, bass thrum and pounding drums. Somewhere, there’s a depressing-yet-slightly-hopeful indie foreign film awaiting its soundtrack.
During this set, it’s the Mogwai Young Team tracks (“Mogwai Fear Satan”, “Like Herod” and “Tracy”) that are minor-chord wall-of-sound wonders. But there’s prettiness and quiet too: the ethereal vocoder treatment on “Hunted by a Freak” or the romantic “Thank You Space Expert” (from of the band’s soon-to-be-released album The Hawk is Howling) let little slivers of light in.
Just enough light to evoke the usual Seventeen Seconds-era Cure references. So, not that much light, then, in retrospect.
The Hawk is Howling
“Helicon 1” and “Friend of the Night” rise and expand (then go quiet, as expected) as does the anthemic new track “I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead”. The Hawk...’s other songs also fare well. “The Precipice” – which starts bass-heavy and dirge-like, then goes all psychedelic loud until the listener has no choice but to push her earplugs a bit further into the ear and nod reverently – along with “Scotland’s Shame” and the grinding single “Batcat”, elicit much the same response. Mogwai live (as in their albums) are both war and peace.
They might not be much to watch, but they are something to experience. The devil is definitely here, as are the details.
Mogwai website. Mogwai in Vancouver was presented by Timbre Productions.
Mogwai and F*ck Buttons tour the US, eastern Canada and Europe September - November, 2008. For tour dates and info, visit the
Mikala Taylor - Mikala Taylor is the creator/writer of BACKSTAGERIDER.COM, an editor/interactive producer, and was the former associate editor of ...
