Forward Fest Day Three: Tonight the monkey dies

Like many listeners, The A.V. Club occasionally comes down with pretty-moody-music fatigue, at a loss as to how some of these bands stand out from the pack. The Antlers' set opening for Low at the High Noon Saloon on Saturday has restored our patience a bit. After hearing how well guitarist-singer Peter Silberman controls his mix of achy moans and falsettos (a singing style that's usually a recipe for going over the rails), and how drummer Michael Lerner and synths-gadgets guy Darby Cicci inject suspense and dense atmosphere into songs from the recent album Hospice, we can't simply dismiss the band with genre labels. The record barely hints at the band's live power. To make the surprise more pleasant, the Antlers began playing only about a half-hour after the scheduled start time, a likely record for punctuality in a true gauntlet of delays.

The Antlers' Peter Silberman.Jessica Steinhoff

Seeing Low live for the first time is like gently waking up on another planet. It could simply school anyone else playing the fest on how to be a tremendous live band. While The Antlers created a big sound for three people, Low created a big sound for three people who are each doing relatively little, thanks to their relentless precision. Husband-and-wife Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's harmonies, Sparhawk's sparse guitar chords, Parker's kick-drum-less drumming, and Steve Garrington's bass lines summoned a beautiful hush, but with a vengeance, as the set opened with "Shots And Ladders," from 2002's Trust. Still, after 16 years of building themselves into a beloved, model indie-rock band, Sparhawk and Parker came off as disarmingly normal people. During a new song, Sparhawk forgot the lyrics and just said, "Ah, shit," getting a good-natured laugh from the crowd. Parker reminded him of the lines. One of them was "But you know every word," which Parker followed with a teasing "apparently not" before slipping back into a harmony.

Ignoring a bunch of inconsiderate chatter in the back of the room (take it to the patio, jackasses), Low stuck with the pared-down approach it mastered before recording relatively cranked-up 2006 album The Great Destroyer. Even Destroyer's "California" opened with a gently brushed rendition of its guitar hook, in contrast to the bright, almost staccato picking on the album. Either way, it swelled into some goddamn beautiful moments, especially as Sparhawk and Parker joined voices on the bridge: "Would it keep you strong if I said it with a song?" Sparhawk did hit the distortion a few times, shredding "When I Go Deaf" to its triumphant finish and shaping a droning intro to "Canada." Taking a break from keeping everyone in misty-eyed shock before the encore, Sparhawk gave a shout-out to DeForest, where the band's van broke down once: "It was alright. They had a Culver's there and a Holiday Inn Express—with a pool." The band closed with the optimistic charge of "Last Snowstorm Of The Year," sending the crowd off in an almost post-coital daze.

Another band harnessing ominous moods and tasteful guitar chops, South Africa's BLK JKS brought the fest to another peak later on at the Orpheum Stage Door. Well, first, Chicago's Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, some of whose members are originally from Ghana, got shorted a bit. A small crowd eked up toward the front only to stand back 20 feet from the stage and cautiously groove in place. Many of the folks who'd later file in for BLK JKS (and who might have liked Occidental Brothers) were around the corner watching Andrew Bird, who contributed some violin to the Occidentals' recent album, Odo Sanbra. "Dance" in the band's name: Nathaniel Braddock's graceful highlife-style guitar-playing alone deserved some sweaty bodies to vibe on.

BLK JKS' Mpumi Mcata and Lindani Buthelezi.Jessica Steinhoff

A much more eager audience gathered in front of the stage to hear BLK JKS open an entrancing, dark expanse full of barbed yet elegantly spaced-out guitar work. Singer-guitarist Lindani Buthelezi proved the most versatile of the four band members (though they're all shamelessly excellent musicians). He plucked some intricate acoustic chords and fills while singing "Standby," but more often hung an electric on his lanky, long-armed frame and played all over the place in the best possible sense: In the course of one song, his parts would recall the slicked-up reggae picking of The Police's Andy Summers; the mournful bends of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour; and the panicked shredding of The Mars Volta. Without the horns and dense vocal layers of its debut album, After Robots, BLK JKS took the encouragingly diverse and curious audience on an extra-fierce tour of its sonic shadowland, an irrationally shaped region that curves around African traditions and an impossibly blurry expanse of post-punk and prog. Like anyone else booking a festival, the Forward people have to follow the hype a bit (one of them even asked us, earlier this year, about the "buzz metric" on a band they were thinking of booking), and in this case they nailed it, bringing in a group that backs it up in terms of songwriting, technicality, and generally busting ass for the crowd. Here's some video from our freelance photographer Joe Engle.

Crying and "whoo!"-ing
Overture Hall proved to be the perfect venue for Madison chamber-popsters Pale Young Gentlemen: Vocalist-guitarist Mike Reisenauer sent his soaring vocals into the gorgeously lush string section of cellist Beth Morgan and violinist Gwendolyn Miller. Most of the songs in the set, which drew largely from the Gents’ latest effort, Black Forest (Tra-La-La), drew not only loud applause, but also a dozen out-of-place “whoo!” noises. “I’ve been hearing a lot of that tonight, must be a side effect of H1N1,” Reisenauer joked. Unsurprisingly, the audience loved the Gents and they wrapped up their set with an excellent new tune that had an orchestral Roxy Music feel to it.

Finally—in what looked to be a blue blazer and jeans from our perch on the balcony—Andrew Bird took the stage in front of a giant backline of amplifiers and two giant spinning gramophones. Bird was joined by dexterous drummer Martin Dosh (who also handled keyboards), bassist Mike Lewis, and guitarist Jeremy Ylvisaker, but the performance thrived on Bird’s ability to multi-task. He created huge walls of wandering melody with a few different loop pedals, his violin, and plenty of whistling and warbling into a microphone (and into his violin pickup). Throughout the set, an apparently star-struck girl seated behind The A.V. Club could be heard sobbing-even during “Sweetbreads,” which Bird prefaced by saying it was about Mad Cow Disease. Bird later spoke about riding his bike to Madison from Monticello earlier in the day. “I forgot to bring a light and ended up riding through a quarter-mile of pitch-black tunnel, so I had to rely on the lights of bikers coming toward me to keep me from hitting a stone wall.”

Ankur Malhotra

The performance stretched across Bird’s lengthy back catalog, pulling a handful of tunes from this year’s Noble Beast like “Oh No,” “Anonanimal,” the waltzing “Effigy,” and the plucked violin of “Fitz And Dizzyspells,” while not skipping out on older gems like “Fake Palindromes” from Andrew Bird & The Mysterious Production Of Eggs and “Plasticities” from 2006’s Armchair Apocrypha (during which Dosh’s almost conversational, jazz-infused drumming chattered away brilliantly underneath). Bird shook and swayed with his eyes closed (seriously) as he created layer upon layer of swooping arrangements and expertly whistled away. After Bird closed his proper set with an amped-up rendition of “Fake Palindromes,” the full band hit the stage once more for the heart-wrenchingly dynamic “Don’t Be Scared” from 2003’s Weather Systems.

The Walk of madness
Between the truly disorienting rap of Salem (featuring a skinny, creepily grinning MC running his voice through an effect that made it sound low and disembodied) and Minneapolis dance-poppers Solid Gold, the fest’s most incomprehensible act performed the weekend’s most unrehearsable set for ever-weird local promoter Wongz Walk's final showcase of the weekend. Surrounded by banks of flashing gear, Excepter revved up a stormy cloud of digital noise, with occasional physical flourishes provided by finger cymbals, flutes, and a fraternity paddle. The long, dense haze that ensued sounded nothing like the New York City band's records, but then it didn’t sound like anyone else’s either. The band’s stage presence matched its sonic inscrutability—at any point during the performance, various members appeared to be rehearsing yoga poses, having seizures, or sleeping. If they weren’t all on stage at the same time, these bandmates could have passed for total strangers. However, the ecstatic weirdness was swiftly deflated at the end of the set, when Excepter mastermind John Fell Ryan leapt off stage and indefensibly batted a random concertgoer in the face with his megaphone. The kid didn’t seem too bothered by it, but it was discouraging to see such stereotypically “confrontational” behavior from an artist capable of much more nuanced assaults.

More Stage Door sluggishness
The A.V. Club was a little disappointed to see that TV On The Radio's Kyp Malone was not touring with Brooklyn-based Iran (he's coming to The Annex Oct. 15 with his Rain Machine project), but founding member Aaron Aites (whose current black-metal documentary Until The Light Takes Us looks badass) was there with the rest of the band at the Orpheum. This year's album Dissolver maintains a bouncy energy even as exceedingly bleak lyrics stare into the void, making for fair comparisons to TVOTR's sexy, soul-informed pop. But when playing album highlight "Buddy," Aites really sold lyrics like "I think I'm dying," as he intermittently shuffled around the stage and sat on a chair. Maybe he was a little warm beneath his Malone-rivaling wooly-mammoth beard and hair (or maybe just tired), but even as the guitarist ripped through a solo on set closer "Bad Summer," Aites looked bored to the max, and the mostly seated crowded seemed right there with him.

So when Fruit Bats' Eric Johnson ambled up to the mic around 12:30 a.m. and strummed through the light heartbreak ode "Singing Joy To The World," the appreciative (and very "woo"-happy) crowd mobbed the stage for a breath of fresh air. Once the rest of the Fruit Bats joined Johnson onstage for the rollicking title track from this year's pleasant surprise The Ruminant Band, their organ rolls and twangy guitars filled out a countrified sound. Bashing out the honky-tonk stomper "My Unusual Friend" and even beefing up back-catalog offerings like "Canyon Girl" and "When U Love Somebody," Johnson and crew looked sure as shit and hell-bent on having a good time. And though the onslaught of shifting-tempo chooglers proved to be a bit repetitive, the Fruit Bats' sincerity was more than enough to keep night owls (incessantly) howling.

Hurry up and wait to get claustrophobic
Nobody expects rock shows to run with military precision, but after Friday night’s well-documented clusterfuck, it didn’t bode well that Saturday’s first act pulled up to the venue a few minutes after her assigned start time. Fortunately, kalimbas don’t require a hell of a lot of setup, so Laura Barrett’s set got quickly underway at the Project Lodge. The Canadian thumb pianist more than made up for her tardiness by insisting that Madison is her favorite spot in the whole U.S. of A. (“No, I’m serious!”), and as if to prove her ardor, sweetly reminisced about traipsing through our farmers' markets and drive-ins. This being a strange woman performing stranger songs on the strangest possible instrument, comparisons to Joanna Newsom are inevitable, but Barrett’s got her own thing going on. Augmenting her impressive thumb dexterity with kazoo honks and glockenspiel plinks, she treaded the line between dreamy and cloying, depending on your disposition.

While Low was changing lives and blowing minds at the High Noon, the question lingering at the Project Lodge was: “Where the fuck is the Hussy?” Madison’s beloved garage-rock duo just didn't show up, but with all the schedule blunders and venue changes that took place this weekend, it might not have been their fault. Although a bit sloppy, Nuclear Woods followed the confusion memorably, with what they claimed would be their last show ever. The local bass-and-drums duo cranked out a set of fuzzy and fractured rock ‘n’ roll driven by the brainy bass-lines of Chris Frahm, who shaped his melodic weirdness with loop and whammy pedals, busy fingers, and a giant wrench for good measure. Bespectacled drummer Brandon Kenney beat the shit out of his tiny drum-set (whose kick-drum was held in place by an amplifier strategically stuffed in it).

Though Maps And Atlases' set hadn't changed much over the course of the band's last few shows in Madison, they finally brought a batch of new songs to the Project Lodge. The fresh material sounds a lot less forced than Maps And Atlases' early spazz-rock tunes. Each flowed with grace, in part because the band is now putting melody ahead of displays of their considerable technical skill. The venue welcomed 108 rocking fans for Maps And Atlases, 35 more than previous owners deemed “capacity.” But the evening's weird air of chaos hadn't yet reached its peak.

“So, apparently the concert promoter and the sound guy left, but whatever,” began vocalist/guitarist Nathan Williams, “We’re Wavves.” So began the night’s latest-starting (about 1:30) show. Though Williams gets plenty of hype and criticism from basically everyone who's heard his music, it's an entirely different thing to see of the most talked-about bands of 2009 in a basement full of ravenous, hard-moshing fans. The intimate confines of the Corral Room served as a nagging reminder that this might have be the smallest crowd the blog darlings had played for in a while. From opening track “I’m So Bored” on, it was hard to hear much over the hard-hitting drums and reverb-heavy noise emanating from the guitar amp. Even with so little space to work with, Wavves played about as hard and loud as possible. As the show progressed, the audience continued to swell. While the turnout had a lot to do with Wavves' recent climb up the hip list, the show had a bit of DIY punk vibe. All in all, a surprisingly powerful and fun set to bring Forward Fest to an end.