Forward Fest from the bottom up: a few dozen lesser-known highlights
Milwaukee's Direct Hit prepares to cry out from the depths of the Corral Room.
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While last year's Forward Music Festival was top-heavy with fairly prominent headliners, you might say this year's is bottom-heavy. That is, even more so than last year, there's an absolute sea of lesser-known bands to sort through between the bigger names. (And there are simply more bands overall this time around—a daunting 108, by festival organizers' count.) But for the most part, it's a good problem to have. The A.V. Club went through the FMF lineup from the bottom up to sort out all the different flavors the little guy brings to this year's festival and create a guide for those willing to venue-hop and mix it up throughout the weekend. Of course, this still doesn't cover everything by a long shot, so see fmf09.com for the complete schedule--it's current as of our deadline, but may change.
Freshly forward
Though Forward rather wisely stays grounded in better-known acts with pretty broad appeal, it's also branched out in ways that challenge that approachable indie-rock aesthetic. This year's lineup is slightly more wise to the fun sonic fuckery brewing up in Madison's little musical pockets, including the fuzzy, melodic outbursts of local bass-and-drums duo Nuclear Woods (Saturday, High Noon Saloon), the cloudy, noise-drenched pop of Peaking Lights (Saturday, High Noon Saloon), and the minimalist-yet-layered compositions of the returning All Tiny Creatures (Thursday, High Noon).
But it's even more unexpected to see Forward taking another, longer-running, and distinctly more goth-y local music fest under its wing: Reverence (Thursday, The Frequency; Friday, Orpheum Stage Door; Saturday, Inferno), which celebrates the constantly overlooked variety of the Midwest's industrial and electronic offerings, from melodramatic goth-rockers Sensuous Enemy to the eclectic Null Device to more comical angles like The Gothsicles' vampire-obsessed 8-bit tunes. Moving more toward the middle of the road, Friday's AbsolutePunk.net showcase at the Orpheum Stage Door favors the compressed emo- and pop-infused side of the punk-rock equation, as epitomized by Pittsburgh's respectable Punchline and Orlando's Between The Trees.
Null Device, "Sacre Coeur"
Nobody who took even a glance at last year's Forward schedule would have expected the organizers to give into Madison's jam-band leanings as much as it has this year, or to edge into world-music territory on the very same weekend the Madison World Music Festival is taking place. Fortunately, even those who dislike both genres would have to admit that Garaj Mahal's (Saturday, The Frequency) jazz-fusion workouts and Occidental Brothers Dance Band International's blissful, up-tempo high-life (Saturday, Orpheum Stage Door) add some refreshing variety here.
Havin' a party you can't see
Unfortunately, there's a catch to packing such monstrous variety into three measly days: Madison doesn’t have enough venues to hold them all during business hours. Rumor has it that local promoters Wongz Walk have dealt with this by scheduling a couple of “after-parties” at an “undisclosed location.” This means that the only people who will enjoy sets from Madison crust-punks Deep Shit, sonic warlord Burial Hex, post-punk weirdo Dead Luke, and Chicago’s Ghetto Division will be those who are persistent enough to ask around at the showcases and figure out what in the hell is going on. In almost equally weird news, Forward Fest patrons will also be able to get silly with the Gomers at the High Noon for a regularly scheduled happy-hour session of Gomeroke on Friday.
Burial Hex live
A few real riot starters
Apart from some of the heavier industrial beats on offer at the Reverence showcase, Forward works in some rugged little pockets for those who find that Ra Ra Riot just makes them want to punch a wall. The best place to get all drunken-Bam-Bam is at the Corral Room's Friday slot, where Chicago's Team Band will thwack together a set of swaggering, melodic punk, then make way for the rousing, earnest punk-anthem attempts of Milwaukee band Direct Hit. Milwaukee's Worrier rounds that bill out with a sound that might come off at first like simply more danceable post-punk, but has everything from surf-rock to African-influenced melodies leaking in through its glitchy fault lines.
The rocking-out comes with a more old-school finish Thursday night at the Majestic, though. Puerto Rico's Davila 666 can knock out retro-raw pop tunes just as effectively as (well, actually with a bit more focus than) last year's Forward Fest breakouts Monotonix, and Reverend Peyton's Big Damn Band finishes out the night with a festive set of blues numbers that rattle along on acoustic slide guitar and washboard.
Davila 666 live
Murky explorations
Brooklyn weirdos Excepter (Saturday, High Noon) twist the influences of '80s industrial music, post-punk, and hip-hop into a greasy rat that sneakily slips away from classification. On 2008’s Debt Dept, Excepter spews out tangential rants and playful howls over an often fractured pulse coated with jerky synth and guitar. Further genre-evasion comes in the form of South Africa’s BLK JKS (Saturday, Orpheum Stage Door), which is on the road supporting its debut album, After Robots. BLK JKS’ soulfully dark numbers weave into rich layers of native rhythms with little notice as the warm vocals of Lindani Buthelezi levitate above. We’ll go ahead and call this one a must-see, because BLK JKS may never return to Wisconsin, let alone Madison.
Excepter, "Burgers"
Cougar (Friday, Capitol Theater), formed in Madison, has become even more difficult to pin down, and almost out of necessity. Before the band got around to recording its new album, Patriot, its members had fanned out across the country, which meant lots of recording and songwriting via e-mail committee. The immaculate, guitar-centric instrumental rock of Cougar's first album, Law, has sprouted some heavy, noisy undergrowth and come to feel almost as much like a meticulous electronic project as it does a rock band.
Danceable dork-athons
Aforementioned promotion crew Wongz Walk is giving this year’s Forward Fest a special corner for ticket-holders to dance like assholes and sweat all over. Beloved Portland electro-dorks YACHT will be headlining Friday’s showcase at the Orpheum Lobby (not the greatest place to catch a show, given its unflattering acoustics), sharing the bill with auto-tuned R&B caricature Rory Kane, Green Bay street-rapper Yolks, Milwaukeean synth-punks Terrior Bute, and Das Racist (the blog-boobs responsible for that wretched “Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell” song). On Saturday, it may be worthwhile to catch the infectiously melodic pop of Minneapolis’ (ahem, formerly Madison's) Solid Gold and the warped synthesizers and drugged-up hip-hop of Salem at the High Noon Saloon.
Solid Gold, "Who You Gonna Run To?"
The woods and the backroads
Once Bon Iver blew up (not long after playing Forward Fest's little ancestor, Madison Pop Fest, two years ago), Justin Vernon's hometown of Eau Claire became celebrated as a busy little shoebox of delicately re-imagined folk-rock sounds. That's thanks in part to Amble Down Records, but not every band at the label's showcase Friday in the Overture Center Rotunda comprises misty wood spirits. Meridene's friendly pop melodies charge into the space with some rather lustily pounded piano and guitar, while The Cloud Hymn's bare acoustic guitars and male-female harmonies (the male half of which recall a hushed-up Frightened Rabbit) gingerly creep along the walls.
Adding to the feeling that Bon Iver is becoming the sensitive-guy version of the Wu-Tang Clan, a few more affiliates trickle into town this weekend: Some of Vernon's former bandmates are earning a boost of their own with the finely detailed vocal harmonies and acoustic meditations of Megafaun (Thursday, High Noon), and Milwaukee's Collections Of Colonies Of Bees (Friday, Capitol Theater) plays here days before the debut release of Volcano Choir, a band that's basically them and Bon Iver. Vernon's also supposed to be lending vocals to the forthcoming full-length from All Tiny Creatures, which shares Thursday's bill with Megafaun.
When it comes to local folk-pop, Forward has also enlisted the usual suspects: Local songwriter Jentri Colello will join forces with her band Flatbear to support Ra Ra Riot at the High Noon on Friday, while Saturday will see Crane Your Swan Neck set the stage with its quirky tunes at the Frequency and pop-swooners Pale Young Gentlemen playing before festival headliner Andrew Bird at the Overture Center. On the more earthy end of local singer-songwriterdom, Blake Thomas' country-folk tunes should pair nicely with featured act Richard Buckner Thursday at the Majestic.
