All Saturday afternoon, Caledonia played host to a series of free shows. I made it there around 4 p.m. and caught the back half of a set by White Violet, who played melodic, slightly spacey folk-rock, like a humbler My Morning Jacket, and filled out what might have been standard singer-songwriter fare with dual guitars that shimmered and intertwined before building up to a stormy wall-of-sound climax. They were new to me and a nice surprise, and I expect to hear plenty more of them once their album comes out in August.
Rappers Mad Axes followed, playing to a room that began nearly empty (I felt bad for the guest MC who kicked off their set, who had solid flow even if he did tend to eat the mic) and steadily filled to a decent-sized crowd, which still wasn’t nearly what they deserved. I enjoyed Deaf Judges the one time I saw them before their split, but it’s clear that the 3 remaining Judges (two MCs, one DJ) who formed Mad Axes have raised their game. They rode beats that straddled the line between sampling-era style and modern digital production, and traded verses with precision, tossing out free-associative references (from Janeane Girafolo to Aquaman), infectious charisma, and over-the-top horniness.
Their stage presence was in a similar vein, featuring a giant battle axe (their mascot, presumably), aerial condom donations (one landed on a bench and remained there for the rest of the day), and banter like “I’d like to have sex with every one of y’all!†At the end, they asked “How many of y’all have crushes on us now?†and I can’t speak for the rest of the crowd – though some certainly spoke for themselves – but I was on board. You know, in a purely musical sense.
Casper & The Cookies played next, on the outdoor patio-turned stage. The long-running pop group (in Athens terms anyway), led by former Of Montreal member Jeff Nesmith, had the exuberance of many a younger band. Nesmith’s guitar jerked and jangled in a very early-80s fashion while he rattled off hyper-literate vocal hooks, the bass played buoyant, cartoonish lines, and the fourth member, a big bearded guy, bounced from secondary percussion (standing drums, xylophone) to various noisemakers, and finally to complete a guitar trio for the rousing finale.
I’ve seen Muuy Biien a couple times at Go Bar, but this was the first time I caught them inside Caledonia. Their brand of 80s throwback hardcore punk gained a lot from the improved acoustics; it sounding downright pummeling. They also benefitted from a dual guitar attack, thanks to the guest spot of original guitarist Gerry Green. Several of the songs lived up to that sound, solid slabs of aggression with just enough nuance to keep them interesting. Others felt repetitive and underdeveloped, or pointlessly brief. At the start of the show, frontman Joshua Evans barked “Everyone go fucking crazy!â€, and a few people followed his orders, throwing themselves against one another with wild abandon for about ten seconds.
The show never reached that level again, but how could it be expected to? This wasn’t a punk crowd. Evans seemed frustrated, however, at one point saying “Since you guys are just gonna stand there, we’ll play a dance song.†And they did, sort of. While I didn’t see anybody dancing, the song had a nervy beat that could be danceable, with a stoic drive that was distinctly drawn from British post-punk a la The Fall or Josef K, but that retained that American hardcore fury. It was easily the most unique bit in their roster, so here’s hoping their future development follows its lead.
The next band sounded like they thought they were opening for Coldplay or something, so I left to wander around and didn’t make my way back (or see any notable performances) until Bambara came on at nine.
Bambara hasn’t been a local band for a little while now, and their presence has been missed. They filled a niche which goes otherwise neglected in the local scene, taking on both the moody, minor-key side of post-punk (Joy Division, The Chameleons) and the blissful noise of shoegaze (more Loop than MBV, but especially reminiscent of early A Place to Bury Strangers). Combined with a killer rhythm section that drives hard while keeping things just simple enough, that makes for a sound that’s eminently satisfying.
Sadly, the outdoor stage at Caledonia was not the right place for them. They need four walls from which the guitar noise can reverberate until it becomes all-encompassing, and they thrive in the dark where the triggered lights on drummer Blaze Bateh’s transparent kit go from potential gimmick to revelation. The band did the best they could given the circumstances (save the vocals, which, combined with Mad Axes’ opener, convinced me that the mics at Caledonia must be delicious), and it was still a solid show, but Caledonia dropped the ball by denying them their rightful place indoors.
I was convinced to abscond to Ciné to see Crow’s Feet, and was glad I did. They’re probably best described as a noise group, with elements of ambient post-rock. They played one half-hour composition, which began and ended with what was almost surely a found cassette tape of some sort of motivational speaker. This led into intermittent noise effects from a homemade synth (patch cables galore), to tentative guitar chords, to spare, resounding progressions played on a separate synth, all steadily layered on one another and backed by drum beats that held up the growing wave of sound and carried it forth to crescendo and back again.
Back at Caledonia, TaterZandra were on. Once again, I’ve covered them elsewhere, but I should add that they do an exhilarating live cover of “Kool Thing.” Any band that has the guts to cover Sonic Youth deserves some respect. One that does it this well – and makes it work in the context of their own material – deserves undivided attention.
I left to find a snack and returned to find myself stuck in a long line waiting for Manray. Caledonia filled up shortly thereafter, and once we could hear the band start playing some of those in line commenced to jeering those who remained outside the venue drinking but, as we were informed, still counted towards capacity. Eventually I made it inside, in time for the last few songs of Manray’s set. They were as impressive as ever: a whirlwind of mathy, interlocking guitar and bass parts with a propulsive punk edge and the guttural vocals to back it. The crowd was packed tight, and a lot of them seemed to know all the words. I don’t, and have probably seen them live more times than I’ve listened to them on record, but props to them for cultivating such a fanbase, especially considering that their acknowledged – and evident – lineage includes such under-recognized bands as Turing Machine and Faraquet (alas, I had hoped to be the first to make the latter comparison).
Bit Brigade kept the place packed, but I could tell it was a different sort of crowd when I saw a thirty-something woman standing beside me playing Persona on her PSP. Yes, this is a band targeted at video game nerds, but that doesn’t mean they lack any appeal outside that. It was my first time seeing them, and the premise of a live band (including half of Cinemechanica) playing the soundtrack to a game while the game itself was played intrigued me, like a modern(ish) version of a silent film orchestra.
As soon as the title screen of Megaman 2 appeared on the projector screen and the band kicked into high-energy, major-key riffing (the cheese factor being part of the fun), I was all in. The songs that followed returned often to what I came to think of as “the Megaman key,†which is irrepressibly inspirational and seems to exist only above the twelfth fret. Still the tunes were fleshed out enough for the full band format that they took on a life of their own, and the band’s rock-solid timing and finesse made some pieces which were clearly not intended for these instruments seem like simple affairs.
The same could be said of Noah McCarthy, who tore through in one life a game whose punishing difficulty was endlessly frustrating to my single-digit self. It was a strange but fitting end to my AthFest experience, which is about nothing if not highlighting all the unconventional variety that makes our local music scene fascinating and worthwhile.
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