Caine Blog

What a shame - this concert had so much potential, unfortunately unrealized, and it ended up a disappointment.  As for the bands: I only saw Amazing Baby and Violens, so I can’t comment on Chairlift -  easily the most hyped band of the night - but the two bands I did see are also leading practitioners of the lite-psychedelic sound, a term I first used in a little blurb for the AV Club to describe MGMT.  Here’s why…

First: ‘psychedelic’ is too vague as an unmodified descriptor.  There are bands from long ago - Quiksilver Messenger Service, Black Sabbath, Jefferson Airplane - and from today - Comets On Fire, Howlin Rain, Awesome Color, Black Mountain - whose sound might be described as psychedelic.  They’re also without a doubt heavy: loud guitars, Bonham-inspired drums, shrieking, soloing, Hammond organ.   At the opposite pole, we have some newish groups like Amazing Baby, Passion Pit, and MGMT who are keeping things strange without rocking out too hard.  It’s music for the kind of stoners who wander in the woods and wear bright secondhand sweaters, not the more well-known, bass player-in-a-metal-band, basement-dwelling variety.

Second: MGMT, Chairlift, etc. aren’t really all that psychedelic.  Let’s be honest about this.  There’s so much crazy music out there - minimal techno, free jazz, avant-garde classical composition - that to describe a band like MGMT as psychedelic seems a bit much.  A lot of these bands are really pop bands with a gloss of the unconventional, the latter of which is often manifested in outrageous stage costumery or lighting.

Now the show was poorly promoted.  A Friday night?  The show shoulda been sold out and hardly anyone was there.  $10 was way too steep a price for the lack of fun on offer, and to make matters worse a massive overhead light was kept on during Amazing Baby’s entire performance.  Ugh.