I bought The Slip's newest album, Eisenhower, on iTunes last week. "Ex-jam turned indie rock" is a perfect way to describe them. The album is easy to listen to--the band keeps the musical intricacy that once could have made them a jam band, but it's all poppy enough for you to sing along to, and only one of the songs is more than seven minutes long. It stands in stark contrast to their earlier releases -- even the album they released only months before is decidedly more wandering and jazz-based. In this album they seem to be following the progressive rock trends set by the likes of Death Cab for Cutie or the Decemberists. It's a cool, solid sound, full of great steady guitar lines and crisp vocal harmonies.
The songs themselves are just the right blend of movement and structure, never becoming formulaic or boring. The closest the band gets to disjointed jammyness is on the instrumental track "First Panda in Space", which harks back to the structure of their earlier stuff but still has a moving electric feel, eventually acting as more of an intro to the following song than a statement itself. The rest is lyrical and catchy, especially the first two tracks. "Children of December" pays homage to all those children whose December birthdays go forgotten. "When you're born on Christmas or the day before New Year's they can sing `happy birthday' but nobody hears." "Even Rats" follows, and it is indeed a pretty great, if unconventionally subtle, protest song. "Maybe the men up on Capitol Hill need a little less Jack and a little more Jill/you can have my stereo/Even though the race may never be won I can lay like a dandy getting heavy in the sun/Take a love song and beautify." The head-banging guitar was rocking enough to warrant this song's inclusion on that crazy new game Guitar Hero.
In a coincidence of perfect timing, my hippie jam-phile of a friend announced she was going to see The Slip in concert on March 1st at the Recher Theatre in Towson. She was more a fan of their earlier, jammier stuff, but had seen them a couple of times live before. So I was pumped, and my expectations were high. I liked the idea of a lyrical prog-rock band with a history of heavy improvisation.
The house wasn't packed -- which could have been attributed to it being a miserably rainy Thursday, but the crowd consisted of everyone from teenage Avril Lavignes to soccer dads, and of course, your usual long-haired dancing hippies and some skeezy-looking Towson regulars. The look of the band itself was decidedly more emo than jam band -- dark jeans and stringy hair.
They were set up in an unconventional way, with the bassist Marc Friedman in the middle and lead guitarist/vocalist (and Billy Crudup as an Almost Famous look-alike) Brad Barr off on stage left with drummer Andrew Barr on the other side. The shock was the fact that there are only three of them -- guitar, bass and drums -- hugely surprising considering the fullness of their sound. And their sound was full. They opened with "Even Rats," apparently their most popular song. A few people sang along. That was delivered pretty solidly, but from then on, they wavered from sounding full and together to just loud and sometimes sloppy. It occurred to me then that the unique combination that initially attracted me to The Slip so much could potentially produce a fragmented, noisy sound. Loud and jammy sometimes doesn't yield such great results. I hesitate to make any generalizations, however. There were genuine moments of togetherness, when the strength of sound the band was aiming for played to their favor. Their enthusiasm was definitely high -- Barr broke a total of maybe four guitar strings. The sound just didn't seem polished enough at times.
The overall effect was a good, fun, dance-worthy show, despite any messiness. They closed their encore with "Children of December," and in an extended outro, in which Brad Barr kept jamming while climbing up to stand on the top of the 15-foot amp, jumping back to stage on the final chord. It was a true rockstar moment. I half expected him to shout "I am a golden god!" on the way down.
