For all that Baltimore has on it — more vibrant arts scene, non-transient residents, that intangible, irascible “charm” — DC still manages a few boasting points, largely by way of brute amenities.
The plethora of DIY venues, plus the few real rock clubs (the Ottobar, Sonar (+ Talking Head), the Hexagon, and the 21-and-over Wind-Up Space and Metro Gallery) manage to adequately support Baltimore’s prolific musical population, but DC comes out on top in terms of sheer volume, as well as variety.
It’s unclear, for example, where in Baltimore one might go to see Calgary’s noisy rockers Women perform.
But DC’s blandly-dubbed DC9 proved a nice fit for the band. With a one-foot-high nod to the concept of a rock show being held on a stage, the set-up isn’t all that different from that of a basement show, and feels even less formal than Baltimore “unofficial” spaces like the Floristree.
Opening was Black Telephone, a DC-local band not following Women on the rest of their tour, and for good reason.
Black Telephone belongs less on Flemish Eye or Jagjaguwar than on Calvin Johnson’s K Records, with their twee amateurism unabashedly shining through on each three-chord song.
Complete with a jangly acoustic guitar, boy-girl call and response, and even the weird fake-it-til-you-make-it instrumentation that marks so much of K’s roster (the “drummer” was a dude wearing four rubber thimbles on his fingers, tapping expressively at his drum machine), Black Telephone was out of place.
There was none of the element of assault so key to Women (and thus to the expectations of a Women audience), and the open-chord-heavy acoustic guitarist’s guitar face seemed parodic compared to the stony glares of the tandem shredders of the rest of the night.
Still, Black Telephone is the sort of band that you can’t really fault, if only for their earnestness and (faux) naivete. The tone was set, if somewhat lamely, as essentially joyful, which fit, if not for Women’s occasional gloominess, for second openers and co-native Canadians DD/MM/YYYY well.
Although their records came off spacier and yelpier, the DD/MM/YYYY (pronounced “day month year”) is almost fascistically structured with some of the tightest rock changes outside of strict math rock or jazz fusion.
The songs were long, spewing polyrhythms all over the venue, but never feeling arbitrary or gratuitous in their complexity.
The two singers — one switching between a totally-not-Los-Campesinos!-y stand-up cymbal and snare and a droning, effected saxophone and the other playing mostly chromatic guitar riffs all over the higher frets of his guitar — certainly showed their allegiances to US Maple and no-wave vocalists, but weren’t afraid to dip into more melodic, spacy arrangements.
The most surprising and impressive thing about DD/MM/YYYY was how they walked the fine line between chaos and control, never once alienating the audience in show-offy idiosyncrasies.
And then, Women. Touring on their phenomenal Public Strain LP released in the States in late September, the band managed to showcase just what it is that makes them so fun to listen to.
Where DD/MM/YYYY are clearly and defiantly no-wave revivalists, Women have a more complex relationship to that music.
Literalizing the “wall of sound” concept, Women boxed in their drummer behind his kit and their amps, and played loud.
The quartet drew heavily on Public Strain, slipping in and out of drone interludes, as well as several cuts off of their 2008 self-titled, and even some unreleased songs.
Singer Patrick Flegel proved enigmatic as a co-frontman (the three guitarists form a single front line), but especially during the group’s most celebrated track (that a low-profile indie band from Calgary can even have a “hit” song seems sort of ridiculous, but that’s the Internet), “Black Rice,” off of the self-titled LP.
Seemingly intentionally mucking up the centerpiece riff, and sloppily cranking up the tempo, he mumbled at the audience, his stoniness serving as the 21st-century Johnny Rotten sneer.
But somehow it came off not as confrontational or dismissive, but endearing and genuine. Indeed, Women is not a band to be confined to one mp3 passed around the blogosphere a couple of years ago.
With Monday’s show, the men of Women made clear that theirs is a band with staying power, making such a show spectacular.
