Scumeating Tour Kick-off with Chambers, Thimble vs. Needle and Scumeating at Glow - Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Scumeating - Glow

Scumeating Tour Kick-off with Chambers, Thimble vs. Needle and Scumeating at Glow

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

What can you say about Glow? It’s a strange space, a cross between an airport lounge and a mid-80s disco. But this is the second time that I have seen Scumeating there. There is something to be said for that: schizophrenia meets irony in a soft leather chair overlooking the transient activities of Railroad and Holly. Maybe it’s perfect. I don’t know. There is always a bizarre cake around and someone ordering a grasshopper – which the bartender has to go online to figure out how to make. Meanwhile, the crowd is festooned with glowstick bracelets and ominously quiet. Church disco. Waiting for a plane. 

Chambers - Glow

Chambers, made up of the Sarah Jerns and Matt Curtis, breaks the quiet with two massive guitar hammers. Reminiscent of the Dirty Three. Stumbling slow noise. Waves of electric strings. Feedback music. Loud and relentless instrumentality. The two of them, each with guitars, standing on the dance floor like noise drunk gunfighters in a Sergio Leone dream of the agonies of echo. Beautiful. And in the strangest way, upsetting all expectation, getting into your skull with whips of lightning and ripping the tissues of your brain to pieces. If there was a heroin addict in the crowd, he’d be wanting to shoot up about now. Grace note: walked over the bartender at the end of the set to get a beer and he said to me: Jesus Christ, I was about to lose it with all of the fucking noise! Music to drive bartenders at the Glow insane to. Kudos, Chambers. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/SarahJerns

Thimble vs. Needle - Glow

Next up, a variation (minus Chris Stainback) on Thimble vs. Needle with the inimitable Kat Bula on guitar/vocals/violin, Anna Arvan on cello/vocals and Tim Leighton on drums/guitar/mandolin. After the beautiful noise comes exquisite harmonies as in  “The Only Girl You Are Not Allowed to Kiss.” These songs seem to epitomize something just underneath definition, perhaps it’s the mood of the 21^st century with a healthy sense of humor. The musicianship is outstanding but casual, not forcing itself through the performance. Just there and talented. With each time that I have heard Thimble vs. Needle, I am reminded how much they make me smile with their subtle self-conscious odes of self-consciousness. Near the end, Tim sings a song with the line “Hey Buddy, you’ve got puke on your shoes.” It is delivered flat, as a dirge, a lament. The others join in harmony. Beautiful. “Hey Buddy, you’ve got piss on your knees… blood on your hands.” Appalachian Bellingham. Reminded of the Band at Big Pink. 

http://thimblevsneedle.fourfour.com/

Scumeating begins to assemble. Jess Manley told me he has a migrane but believes it will help his performance. Undoubtedly. Fiona has just come in from K.D. Laing, wondering why no one seems to know who she is. And Robert, newly shaved pate shining, is in a “fine damned mood.” All of this seems auspicious. Chris Gusta is up there on guitar. Bill Anker on drums. A.J. Hawn on keyboards and Kat Bula is standing off to the side with her violin. It begins in media res, a wall of sound that was not there before is suddenly in front of the crowd. A wall of raw emotional, but sharp edged, music. Robert Lashley’s words sing out of a storm of intensity. Imagine back to a time of trying to tune into a distant radio station and all of a sudden all at once hearing pounding drums, infernal violin and guitar and keyboard, a fucking trombone, what? and the haunting voice of a preacher trying to save sinning souls from the hands of an angry god. Imagine Don Quixote on acid with a band tuned to his every Pulse. This is Lashley, the poet unleashed. Songs don’t seem to begin or end as much as take a breath before coming right back at your throat again. Jess Manley spins voices out of the ether. Kat Bula’s violin and Fiona’s trombone seems to be waging war against each other, trading musical salvos like punches. Ankers’ thunderous drumming holds everything into place. Gusta and Hawn setting the limits to the music. And the Voice of Lashley like a rusty knife over the strings of an ancient guitar, from the edges of time, rhapsode. It is like nothing else you are going to see. Here’s hoping their tour will offend, alienate and utterly shock the rest of the world into abject admiration.

http://scumeating.bandcamp.com/