Finally! It's taken long enough! How long have I been sweating Thunderheist? So long that they're practically passe in terms of my listening tastes, but to finally have a chance to see them live? I'll take that offer up and welcome 2007 back with open arms. Now let's run throughout the rundown shall we?
Arya and I arrived at 11, greeted by the talents of DJ Lifepartner who I featured a bit back in an installment of Hang the DJ on LocalCut. He really nailed in, playing some DJ Mujava, the Aeroplane/Au Revoir Simone remix/cover of Friendly Fires' "Paris," (MP3) as well as an A-Trak remix of Sebastian Tellier's "Kilometer." An excellent La Roux remix even cropped up that made the duo bearable. Shortly after our arrival, openers Winter Gloves took to the stage. I'd thought we'd arrived in time to solely catch headliners Thunderheist and I'm so glad we didn't. Having ignored invites in my inbox to check out Winter Gloves for no reason other than laziness and wanting to stay in, but as they say "Winter is the New Summer," so I got out there and their set was definitely something to catch and crow about. So much energy!
All the band members, from the frontman to the drummer had flare, personality and were oh so playful throughout their whole extremely danceable set. The audience began clapping along, unprompted from the first song! And the Montreal based quartet was pretty much exactly what Passion Pit should be like live. Granted I haven't caught Passion Pit since when they opened for Yelle back in October 2008, but I was thoroughly disappointed as they tried as a band to replicate all that Michael Angelakos had produced solo. They came off as a bad college band in my opinion, much of the electronic hallmarks lost amid their jam-band-y presentation. And Mr. Angelakos was seated and confined behind his keyboard/organ thing the whole time! The point of having an accompanying live band should have been to free him up to be a proper frontman, moving about the stage, reflecting the emotions of the lyrics through exaggerated body movements, but no… not in Passion Pit's case. The band is back on December 7th, I hope it's evolved. Back to Winter Gloves - that was decidedly not the case. Frontman Charles F began the set standing behind his gear - gaining them their first point. He then went from standing on the red carpet of Rotture's stage to his stool and galavanted between the two for the rest of the set, taking a seat a time or two, but staying on his toes the whole time and in turn keeping us on ours.
It is hard to communicate how truly dance able the entire set was, complete with beats that faked the audience out, but always had us swirling around. EVERY SONG. Because sometimes even if you go to see a dance-y band, there will be a tune or two with a slower tempo. Tank you Winter Gloves for not going that route and staying on track, the dance track the whole set.
Towards the end, drummer Pat Sayers noted into the mic how their booking agent had told them Portland was a goth town. An audience member shouted it we as rock town, which elicited a response in the form of more dancing :D It also must be stated the group's resemblance to other Canadian musicians. Guitarist Jean-Michel Pigeon looked like the long-lost brother of fellow Montreal dwellers Wolf Parade's drummer due to his hat, beard and hair length. And I kept thinking of Death From Above's/MSTRKRFT's Jesse F. Keeler. Even if you throw out those two comparisons, there are a number of Portland people they each looked like. Trippy.
So, yes: Thunderheist finally made their first Portland appearance! Conrad has been trying to book them for 3 years. Holocene had them scheduled for a a mid-July show back in 2007, but the duo never made it. I heard a rumbling a week or two before that show that they'd canceled, checked in with Holocene and then shortly after the listing was removed from their calendar page. Boo. And it's taken until for their raucous show to finally grace a Rose City stage.
How did it begin? With super-skinny firecracker Isis doling out booze straight from a bottle into the open mouths of audience members gathered around the stage. Could it have started any other way? No. Arya made a comment to the affect, "is that even legal?," smiling as he asked. No. The Canadian duo trotted out to the beat of a souped up, disco-fied version of "Sweet 16" that had everyone rowdy in an instant and singing along.
The floor was just going crazy the whole time. At some point in the night a posse of 80's skantified ladies had made their way in and they were burning it up along with every drunkard in the building which was pretty much everyone at that point except Arya and I who amazingly played it sober.
If Isis wasn't rapping the hits or singing odes to coke, she was asking for a lot of technical things in terms of the monitors. It seemed her requests split equal time with the amount of singing, but it really didn't take anything away.
So the major bummer is that I debated the whole time, "is this going to be a bus night, or cab night?" and after flip-flopping enough and actually getting turned-off by the amount of inescapable of trashy sexuality happening on the dancefloor and realizing that I am more a 2007 fan than 2009 fan of Thunderheist no matter how excellent their stage presence turned out to be, I decided I wasn't gonna pay $20 for a cab back how and skipped out at 12:20. I walked across the Burnside bridge and just as I got to 4th Avenue, my bus rounded the corner on 5th. So it ended up being a cab night anyway! I left early for nothing, other than to miss out on more entertaining antics which Arya luckily communicated to me the next day.
At one point there was a mic malfunction which Isis jokingly blamed on being black and began bringing up how "Obama is President. Kunta Kinte won!" as reasoning why such an issue should now be burdening her.
I can't believe I missed "Jerk It" live, but I guess somethings are meant to be missed and held out as a carrot for seeing them again. But not in 2010. They're on hiatus for the year ahead working on their respective solo projects. I got an email just the other day about a "airy bass rub" remix Grahmzilla did for a duo by the name of Bonjay...
PS - a bathroom stall bore this awesome quote which I thought was worth an appearance:
Seriously! Literally had to wait like years to see them. I didn't see you there, guess i shoulda been looking. Super fun night though. Small crowd but everybody was dancing.
Posted by: nic | November 24, 2009 at 01:52 PM