Commune-icable: Brightblack Morning Light (By Defensive Listening)

Are hippies cool in indie rock now? Is commune living the latest fad? Have things gone so full circle that we can't even tell an ironic hippie from a sincere one, much like the mysterious popularity of mustaches and mullets and whether someone is a hipster or a pool cleaner? Does the difference even matter? Judging by the number of "indie" rock's usual suspects that played the jam band purgatory known as Coachella this year, the line is becoming increasingly blurred. Truthfully, gutterpunks are probably the real modern hippies, even though they'd be loathe to admit it. I can understand adopting some of the sounds of the Canterbury scene, the Holy Modal Rounders, or truly freaked out ideas from maybe the Red Krayola when they were still a Houston band, but what made a lot of those acts great is that they strayed from the obvious aspects of sixties and seventies culture or mutated them into something original. Walking around barefoot with the "feelin'groovy" attitude that modern flower children like Devendra Barnhart give off is not really for me. It just isn't practical to walk around your average venue in sandals, much less with your bare feet. Rock clubs usually have a really unique flooring material composed of concrete and broken glass with an alcohol, vomit and urine varnish. Not exactly the equivalent of running your naked toes and heels over the lush, salad-like environment of Northern California... but whatever makes you happy. I saw a lot of happy people at the Brightblack Morning Light show on Thursday night at Dan's Silver Leaf.

Mariee Sioux opened the show with a set of melodic folk-influenced songs. The songs meandered into so many different parts that I sometimes didn't know if she'd moved on to the next song. I can respect that kind of complexity for primarily acoustic songwriter fare, but I thought that some of her more successful moments were when she'd repeat the same vocal phrase ten times in a row or more. The crowd was extremely respectful while she played and there was almost complete silence while she performed. It was the kind of quiet that Chris Garver had probably hoped for at Strategies Against Beauty a couple of weeks ago, but it happens to everybody, especially the acoustic troubadour types. Mariee Sioux made a lot of obvious mistakes as far as forgetting lyrics or the next chord she was about to play. It was like that scene in Nirvana's MTV Unplugged performance where Kurt Cobain forgets that line in "Pennyroyal Tea","I-I-I-I'm o-o-on wwwarm milk and lllaxitives...". I thought it was charming and she seemed to deal with it pretty well, unlike a lot of prima donnas from the past ten years who seem to thrive on making the crowd suffer when they can't get through songs. Mariee Sioux's lyrics dealt with the everyday problems you'd encounter if it was oh, I guess about 1893. I heard a lot of mention of grizzlies and arrows, hides and bramble. These seem like fairly anachronistic issues to deal with when you also have to worry about checking your Myspace page. I thought Mariee Sioux played a decent set for the genre, but I sometimes wonder if these singer songwriters get more credit than they should for the more superficial aspects of their career, like wearing a weird dress or looking like a Charles Manson impersonator. Sometimes that's the only difference between one of them and Jack Johnson or Melissa Etheridge.

Earlier I mentioned how gutter punks might be the new hippies, which brings me to Daniel Higgs. I wouldn't call Daniel Higgs a gutter punk, but he certainly has had a long life in punk rock. His resume includes various projects spanning all the way back to the early eighties, most notably in Reagan era Baltimore punk band Reptile House and later in the widely acclaimed Lungfish, who were one of Dischord Records most beloved groups. I hadn't heard anything about his recent solo work and his set came as quite a surprise, and a particularly jarring one after the sedate performance by Sioux. Overall, Daniel Higgs played with an Eastern feel and often played his guitar as if it was a sitar, whether he meant to or not. When Higgs started, I don't think the sound guy was even aware that the performance had begun, since his set was bleeding over the house PA music. Higgs had an assortment of little amplifiers that looked like toys set up around a Fender Squire practice amp, which was the largest piece of amplification he used. He played with the knobs on the toy amps, creating a shrill array of feedback and pulsating drilling noise. The catalyst that supplied the sound was an electric-acoustic guitar, which are notorious for feedback even without being fed through an array of distorted practice amps. Quite a while passed before Higgs began to sing, and when he did his lyrics were ominous doomsday rants. These lyrics, combined with his long grey beard and endless tattoos, gave Higgs the appearance of a crazed vagrant holding an "End is near" picket sign. And I mean that in the best possible way. He cut a really striking figure onstage.

When Brightblack Morning Light started playing, I had no idea that I would be at Dan's Silverleaf until 1:30in the morning. They played for what seemed like an eternity, which caused me to realize that I'm spoiled by most bands I see, who play for about twenty minutes. I mention this because it was evident that drawing things out is a big part of Brightblack Morning Light's philosophy concerning performance and song structure. They would repeat a three note part on the Rhodes piano and repeat it almost endlessly. And just when you'd think that the entire song was over, the repetitiveness would be shattered by an actual change in note and rhythm, and it was usually a welcome respite. The vocals were so lazy and whispered that they almost resembled two people trying to harmonize to a Jandek song. The band had two percussionists who were the most variable aspect of the band, and both avoided standard rhythms and even snare drums. The band looked like the promo glossy of almost any rock band circa 1970, and that look included but was not limited to aviator sunglasses onstage. I guess it's not that important to see what you're playing when you'll just be repeating the first part of a blues progression for fifteen minutes. It's hard to not like the sound of a Fender Rhodes, though, isn't it? I know that part of being into Brightblack's sound is to enjoy the repetition, but I've got to be wary of a band that plays so monotonously that a dog is able to fall sleep onstage. I'm not making that up. It actually happened.

I probably would have enjoyed Brightblack Morning Light more in a smaller dose, but you know what they say about "Too much of a mediocre thing." The next day, I found myself wishing that I had been as excited about seeing Brightblack Morning Light as my parents had been about seeing Steely Dan with Michael McDonald at Nokia the night before. That's a review I wish I could post.