Ponytail

It's a lucky privilege indeed to live in a city where every single band on tour can be depended upon to stop by sooner or later. Yes, it is.

On the other hand, that's a whole lot of hubbub, & it does get difficult to keep track of it all. I'm just not that in the know, much as I'd like to be (Action items: 1. Quit job. 2. Get fake IDs for the children. 3. Never miss another show.). But don't you just hate it when you get all clued in to some "new" band, only to discover that they came through town already like, last freaking year? That is the thing that I hate.

So anyway, Ponytail. Don't answer out loud OK, but have you already seen Ponytail? Shit. I'm hunting online & I see an old tour schedule where it looks like they played Bottom of the Hill last May. Did you see that show? Shit, don't even tell me bc I'm just now getting hip to Ponytail & I want to see them SO. BAD. & as far as I can tell right now they're touring Australia and New Fucking Zealand. & that is very far away indeed from here.

Sigh.

Ponytail is one of those bands where you hear the record & you just immediately know the concert would be so much better. Like, the recording is just so plainly a mere shadow of what you think & dare to hope the band is really all about.

I don't even know how to convey the thrill I'm getting from this music. The band is fast & very, very tight. On first listen, it reminded me a little of Battles. But this is different. It's just more dirty & more sweaty. Nimble, but not even remotely subtle. Bright & hard, but not shiny. Is any of this helping? No, right? Here, hear:

7 Souls - Ponytail

Die Allman Bruder - Ponytail

I think I'm hearing two guitars & no bass, at least some of the time. The vocalist is Molly Siegel. I'm not calling her a singer. I mean, if Molly wants to call herself a singer I'm not going to object or anything, & I have nothing but admiration for what she does. I just think at the end of the day it's too damn reductive to call it singing. Molly yelps, Molly yowls, Molly hollers. She howls.

I just want to be in the room with this band doing its thing. I want to eat some of that euphoria. I want to hear it in my bones.

The Gossip

Regency Ballroom, San Francisco, October 25, 2009

As expected, the crowd at the Gossip was very queer, very hipster. Everyone was fabulous. Everyone. & plus I’m going to go on record saying I have never, ever seen a mohawk look bad on a lesbian. Quote me all you like on that one.

So, when the houselights FUCKING FINALLY go dark, the band comes out drums, then bass, then guitar, & they vamp for a short bit & the crowd is avid & enthusiastic. Then, out comes Beth Ditto with shocking Ziggy-orange hair & singing Dimestore Diamond & the entire Regency Ballroom instantly loses its collective mind, screaming & crying & falling in hysterics. I kid you not, this was adulation right out of the gate. Before the night was over, more than one young lady had removed garments from her own self & passed them up to the stage including, at one point, a pair of black lace panties. Yeah, it was that kind of a night.

& the love was fully reciprocated. Beth sang every song from the absolute edge of the stage, reaching down & touching as many of the assembled supplicants as possible. Singing to them, caressing hands & arms, waxing affectionate between songs about how magical & wonderful it is that we’re all queer & we’re all here together in San Francisco & what an honor it is to be here & thank you for having me I mean it. In all candor, it was so sincere & heartfelt that I found myself getting more than a little caught up in it all.

Of course it doesn’t hurt that the band rocks. Good drummer, great bass player, and fantastic guitar player. Brace Paine (I can’t tell if that’s his punk rock name or his real name) is the guitarist, & his rhythm chops are really just all that. His playing is very fast, very very tight, but also he just has a tremendous amount of grace, style, & well, finesse. Structurally, this is basically a punk band w/variations, & some of the songs are in a classic hardcore mode. So it’s not as if Mr. Paine needs to resort to much subtlety, but it’s there if you listen for it. I also appreciate that he can & frequently does funk it up good, too.

OK but really? Is anyone other than me in this room listening with that critical of an ear? Because Beth really IS the show here. She owns the room & you know what? She earns it every single moment. Beth has an enormous voice, overwhelming even. Her singing is very Tina Turner in tone, timbre, overall dynamic approach. But I only say that for need of a descriptor, bc what she does is not derivative, it’s all her own, & it is a force of nature. Like a god damn hurricane. Oh, & she apologized early in the show bc she’s getting over a cold & so she’s hoarse. Good god, I can’t even imagine how she performs when she’s at the top of her game!

OK, so Beth is awesome. What’s nice is that Beth is also actually very humble, & has a great sense of the history that precedes her. She gave props to Sleater-Kinney, she covered Bikini Kill (!). For the 1st encore, she came out & covered Tina Turner, & I actually found that kind of moving, in a way I’m not really able to explain quite yet.

OK, & then Beth did something I’ve never seen before. The show was clearly over, houselights were on, & the band was done & gone. & Beth comes back out on stage all alone, she makes a little speech about what a pioneer Freddie Mercury was, & then she leads the crowd in a rousing chorus of “We Are the Champions.” Yes, I am fully cognizant of how hokey this sounds in the light of day, but Wow that was a fucking Moment. & I will remember it always.

Getting Into Girls.

It used to be kind of a *thing* that White Stripes only had two members. It was novel, right? Then came Black Keys, then the Kills, the Ting Tings, um, Tenacious D (does that count)? Anyway, is it lately starting to seem like duos are becoming more of a normal thing? Within a couple of days just this week, I’ve heard about three new 2-member bands: (1) Sleigh Bells; (2) Acrylics; and (3) Girls.

I like Girls. Girls are actually 2 boys whose band is called Girls, & their album is called: “Album.” Irony: I stumbled across them on the web, but it turns out they’re locally-grown, right here in our own San Francisco. Not that I get out enough to be in the know re: up-&-coming bands in my own backyard, but I’m working on that. Anyhoo, the buzz has officially commenced for Girls. I see them getting reviewed now on a bunch of blogs & on Pitchfork, but also Village Voice, & even NY Times is enthused.

So, I’m listening to “Album,” and I’m really thinking I could get into Girls. “Album was not recorded in any studio,” its liner notes proudly proclaim. Well, duh. Album was evidently recorded in bedrooms & wherever, & it more or less sounds like that. This is not a criticism. I have great fondness for the lo-fi, low-tech, DIY approach in general. Here, it’s actually a big part of why I’m really getting into Girls.

Here’s the thing: these boys in Girls are some truly great songwriters. No shit, they can really craft the pop hooks, like I find myself singing along to the 2nd chorus when it’s only the 1st time I’ve ever heard the song. So, yeah, it’s way catchy. So much so, that Album could easily have been just too saccharine & cute & pretty for its own good. I’m just saying. BUT, this is not the way of Album, no.

As written, the songs on Album are clean, i.e., unadorned, um *economical* maybe even. There’s no unnecessary explaining in the lyrics, there’s nothing extraneous in the chords. The songs, they are tight. But the *production* of Album takes an exactly opposite approach: the sound is cluttered with random effects & noises & colors. There’s lots of distortion, there’s lots of reverb, there are a lot of sonic layers muddying up these otherwise squeaky songs. Net effect? These very good Girls are getting good & dirty. Which, empirically, is just hot go ahead tell me I’m wrong.

Oh, & the arrangements are utterly unafraid of occasional excess. So while, on some songs, Girls get in & get out wham bam, on others they really take their time veering off on some exploratory tangent. So, e.g., Track 2 “Laura” is basically finished at 3:00 on the dot, but continues on for another 1:51 for no reason other than to groove on the chords, & noodle around a bit on the keyboard & the bass. & why the hell not? It’s a great song, & it’s just NICE to be able to savor it a little longer. I mean, what’s the hurry?

I see on their website that they’re going to be playing here at home very soon. Fri 11/20 at Swedish American Hall (I think that’s actually just part of Café du Nord, right?), and then the next night at Bottom of the Hill. I think I need to seriously check out Girls on one of those nights. Who’s in?

Here's a video, although it's not the best song on Album: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuoTjYYqe4c