Oh BORIS!

Atsuo, Takeshi, and Wata otherwise known as BORIS shot off sonic swirls of drone defined by neither riff nor fuzz on Wednesdsay, November 1st.  Their show, from the lighting to the dry ice to the gestures, is too big for Madison Square Garden so Warsaw, the 1,000 person capacity hall East of McCarren Park was the perfect venue to be immersed in the Tokyo trio‘s sonic world.  Drawing from noise rock and a handful of metal sub-genres, all three members contribute vocals which decorate the ever-changing shapes of their compositions.  

 BORIS’s beating heart is drummer Atsuo  whose gong is worthy of Peter Criss in ’76. In front of a mighty Orange stack, Wata hypnotizes with guitar and keys. 

While Atsuo’s mascara nods to all past ghosts of glam, goth, shock, and theatrical rock; this band destroys any attempt at classification as labels like sludge and shoegaze could be thrown around just as easily as ambient and drone.  It is however, nothing but cohesive and does not genre hop.  It is holistic and smart but doesn’t show off.  It’s not afraid to be dumb either!  That is to say the spirit of Sabbath and Dio and Nigel Tufnel imbue BORIS to the extent of wrapping the challenging experimental ambition in a joyful package full of postmodern smiles.   Yet, its not winking.  It’s knowing.   And no half measures are taken.  What I’m driving at is its perfect and its driven in no small part by Takeshi who plays a mad double-neck bass and guitar unit. 

                Enjoying milk after the show!

BORIS has been honing their fiercely independent aesthetic since the 90s and have released no less than two dozen albums.  In that time, they’ve cross-pollinated with fellow Japanese musician Merzbow (most often) as well as the well-missed Asobi Seksu.  They did a wicked EP called BXI seven years ago with Ian Astbury of The Cult who mentioned his enthusiasm for the group when I spoke to him last year.  They’re currently celebrating their 25th anniversary and touring behind the Dear album released in July on the Los Angeles based label Sargent House.  

The Cult Brings Hidden City Tour To Gramercy Theatre 2-17-16

The Cult rolled into town to play a pair of intimate (for them) venues after unleashing their tenth studio album this month.  Frontman Ian Astbury explained that Hidden City completes a trilogy of 21st century Cult albums that began in 2007 with Born Into This and continued in 2012 with Choice of Weapon.  (He excepted Beyond Good and Evil as that was written more in 98 and 99.)  The trilogy represents the evolution of a band being reborn in the post 9/11 world in the context of social media rising and the music industry collapsing.  Astbury also mentioned the stock market crash (of 08) along with the backdrop of consumerism and the malaise of people’s spiritual lives in an erratic and frenetic time as factors in the environment that helped spawn the recordings.

Hidden City fits into a body of work that includes back to back masterpieces, Love and Electric (and one could make a strong case for Sonic Temple being a third) in the eighties that tattooed their music onto rock’s skin for all time.  Astbury indulged me by sharing a few thoughts on those when I asked him to.  Love in 85  grew out of the group’s love of artists like Joy Division, Public Image Limited, and Siouxsie and The Banshees alongside their affinity for psychedelic rock encompassing the kind found on the Nuggets collection to that of artists like The Doors and Hendrix.  Electric in 87 stripped down and was inspired by hearing stuff like The Beastie Boys and going to “the maestro” Rick Rubin who was still living in an NYU dorm when the connection was made!  With the kick drum turned up, some of Billy Duffy’s most memorable riffs, and not a faded ending (nothing but cold) to be found; Electric remains one of the most perfect and most satisfying rock records.  Bob Rock – who produced the more massive follow-up to Electric, Sonic Temple – was back at the helm for the new record, his fifth with the fellas.  In The Cult’s post-temple work, Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy have drawn upon and expanded upon everything that came before.   Hidden City captures an elusive balance between the visceral and the cerebral, between the sexy and the sublime, that any fan of the group will appreciate as being – if not a capstone, at least an essential testament to the group’s efforts at creating honest, contemporary work.

Throughout The Cult’s career and from a time before they existed, Bowie has been like the sun for Astbury who played Blackstar ahead of the performance at Gramercy which was followed by one at the Music Hall of Williamsburg two nights later.  Hats off to the band for treating NYC area fans to performances in such small spaces.  In addition to a taste of Love’s Rain, the performance footage here features the opening track on Hidden City called Dark Energy.  

The Heavy and The Hives have some things in common. Both gave hard driving, sweaty performances and interacted with their audiences in a way that fed their energy while working fans into a lather at sold out venues – The Heavy at The Mercury Lounge on Monday, June 18th, 2012 and The Hives at Terminal 5 on Friday. The Heavy cover more musical ground as they incorporate R&B, funk, and ska into their rock. They managed to find room on the tiny Merc stage for ten people including a full horn section and a pair of backing vocalists. Frontman Kelvin Swaby, with his mini Mohawk hair cut, coached the crowd how to respond to his calls on new songs from the forthcoming disc The Glorious Dead that will be unleashed next month.

While The Heavy were dressed in suits (at least for starters), The Hives adhered to their black/white visual aesthetic by dressing in tuxes. Swaby is charismatic but Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist is a true madman with showmanship in spades. He led his Swedish quintet through a relentless set of short, fast, and satisfying songs that recall The Ramones without imitating them. He instructed the crowd to answer all his question with “Yes” or “Hives” and later revised that to “Hives!” for all questions. Despite not having the benefit of chairs, he also tried to get everyone to sit down at one point and very nearly succeeded. Something else they pulled off for a laugh that I’ve never seen a band do was having all the members freeze at the end of a number one time like at the end of a seventies TV cop show. All the banter and hi-jinks are secondary to the fact that The Hives are a gloriously good garage band.

That made it two consecutive Fridays for killer rock shows at Terminal 5 as The Cult really went for the throat the previous Friday. Punishingly loud and playing like they had something to prove, they reminded the sold out crowd of how cool the psychedelic rock on the Love album is, how big the arena rock on Sonic Temple is, how tough the rock on the riffy Electric is, and how strong their new album is called Choice of Weapon.

Bonnie Raitt may be better than she’s ever been. On Wednesday at The Beacon she showed her very heavy and tasty chops on slide guitar and sent shivers up my spine on more than one occasion with her voice most memorably on I Can’t Make You Love Me and John Prine’s Angel From Montgomery. Her first appearance on stage was during opener Mavis Staples‘ set and the two share a warm rapport based on mutual admiration and respect. This was the third time I’ve seen Mavis in the past year or so and she is a helluva performer.

Bonnie’s new album Slipstream is very strong and she offered a handful of tracks from it along with tidbits about their origins and contributing musicians/producers. She didn’t fail to deliver some down and dirty traditional blues numbers as well yielding lead vocal to keyboardist Mike Finnigan (who turned in an eccentric performance) for one.