Loudon Wainwright III at Majestic Theatre; Heartless Bastards, Subtle, and Devin The Dude at High Noon Saloon
Joe Engle
Heartless Bastards' Jesse Ebaugh and Erika Wennerstrom rip it up (in a nice way).
If Loudon Wainwright III is bound to go down in history for his sense of humor, he wasn't showing much resistance Sunday night at the Majestic. The songwriter, now in his early 60s, punctuated his songs with mischievously arched eyebrows, dopey pop-eyed grins, and even a wagging tongue, generally mushing his face into silly and sometimes disturbing shapes. Just as often, he crunched his teeth and brows into a grimace. The crowd came ready to egg on Wainwright's famously sick wit, and one or two people even let out a laugh during songs that don't even try to be funny, like "White Winos," in which he tenderly recalls drinking with his mother. Then again, if you're ready to laugh at that, you're ready to handle a gauntlet of emotions, and that's what Wainwright and his lone acoustic guitar went for.
"I'm really old—I'm gonna sing about that all night, in fact. Death and decay is my new favorite topic," he announced early on. He went on to say that it'd always been that way, then started into "School Days," the 1970 classic that already found him thinking about aging. After he'd gotten the crowd comfortable, it was time to open a few trapdoors. "Half Fist," about his grandfather, pulls off the poignant trick of making people reflect on, well, a half-fist, passed on from the first Loudon Wainwright to the second and third.
Pleasantly craggy with the audience, Wainwright ignored some of the night's many yelled requests. He immediately pounced on a couple of others, especially a singalong version of "Wine With Dinner." The crowd's belting wasn't enough for him on this ode to alcohol, though: "I feel like I'm running a 12-step program." After aging, family, and "shitty love," he moved onto the holidays. "Thanksgiving" sums up Wainwright as well as any other song: anxious, cranky, sad, venal, and a little self-deprecating all at once. "Let us somehow get through this meal without that bad old feeling," he sang. Of course, he always reserved the right to go back to a goofier place. The newly written "Unfriendly Skies," for example, chews out an airport worker who messed with his guitar, calling her a "bitch" at least a dozen times.
His encore began with "I.D.T.T.Y.W.L.M." ("I Don't Think That Your Wife Likes Me"), throwing in the overkill-punchline "I detest your wife!" well after he'd made his point. It ended with "Men," yet another tune that opened up a dark well just when people expected a cartoon manhole. "Have pity, on the general, the king, and the captain, / They know they're expendable, after all, they're men," he sang, leaving Madison with a strange hush instead of a smug chuckle. Of all the evening's pranks, that was the craftiest.
Heartless Bastards at High Noon SaloonHeartless Bastards arrived at the High Noon on Saturday with a joyous power-trio boom and a decent-sized wall of warm bodies to bounce it off of, but the Cincinnati group only needed one vocal mic amid all that sound. It belonged, of course, to lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Erika Wennerstrom, whose voice didn't need any extra help rocketing through the mix. She summoned up a shuddering blues bellow on set-starter "No Pointing Arrows" and the a capella intro to "Done Got Old," but then again the group isn't out to menace people. Instead, they let their friendliness blast out on pretty much every song.
That spirit wasn't lost on the audience, a mixed-up crowd that made the night feel half like a badass rock show, half like a jolly happy hour. A woman up front flailed about and repeatedly yelled for the band to play "Searching For The Ghost" from 2006's All This Time (they didn't). A young guy with a mess of curly came forward to give Wennerstrom a skateboard with that album's cover painted on it. Even a seemingly misplaced group of red-clad Bucky bros near the stage seemed pretty pleased. Wennerstrom somehow took it in stride when one of them leered, "I like your Les Paul.... It turns me on."
The band, and the crowd, also knew when it was time for a quieter moment. After stomping the set to a finish with "Nothing Seems The Same," from their forthcoming album The Mountain, Wennerstrom and bass player Jesse Ebaugh came back out and picked up two acoustic guitars to begin the encore. Just about everyone honored Wennerstrom's call for quiet during the song (appropriately labeled "So Quiet" on the setlist sheet), except for a group over to the left, who kept talking as the song began. Wennerstrom stopped, told them to go to the back if they wanted to talk, and got a loud cheer. Then the room went silent for the delicate number, which proved as muscular and resonant as any other that night.
The Bastards then rocked it back up for a triple-shot from 2005's Stairs And Elevators, including "Gray." It's possibly their best song, thanks to a chorus—"I'm gonna take everything, everything"—that turns all of rock's grit into a jolt of determination and youth.
Subtle and Zach Hill at High Noon Saloon
Thursday night at the High Noon gave itself over to relentless noise. First, opener Zach Hill, the drummer of Hella, made good on his promise to play just one 45-minute track, "Necromancer." The bearded, gaunt Hill covered his psycho-killer eyes with sweaty blonde hair and his legs never stopped moving on the pedals, aside from one short water break. His tormented, merciless attack on his 10-or-so piece drum kit was impossible to dance to, and the fusion of live and recorded was more spooky than funky.
Thursday night at the High Noon gave itself over to relentless noise. First, opener Zach Hill, the drummer of Hella, made good on his promise to play just one 45-minute track, "Necromancer." The bearded, gaunt Hill covered his psycho-killer eyes with sweaty blonde hair and his legs never stopped moving on the pedals, aside from one short water break. His tormented, merciless attack on his 10-or-so piece drum kit was impossible to dance to, and the fusion of live and recorded was more spooky than funky.
The showcase of endurance left many either awed or dumbstruck. Accompanied by a pre-recorded track that slipped into murky corners and heavy on synth and drone, Hill never let up. The frenetic drums settled briefly into satisfying rhythms for short bursts, but then went right back to the chaos of death and despair that is “Necromancer.”
The crowd was as eclectic as the music, mixing music geeks, rap heads, and the defiantly, confusingly self-styled. Subtle’s stage setup was heavy on black and white stripes, with flourishes of red like splattered blood and a striped skull center stage. Someone in the crowd said the large backdrop looked “like somebody’s art-school thesis.”
After a mellow atmospheric interlude, Subtle frontman Doseone came out in a mohawk and doctor’s headpiece, ready to fill the space between songs with Gen-X cynicism and Neil Hamburger-bad asides both crass and corny. The band wore a variety of all-white getups, either slacker or guru or tacky. Subtle featured a drum kit, live drum machine, recorder, sax, harmonica, synth, and about ten more assorted instruments and gadgets.
The sound throbbed and pounded, muddy and haunting, and most vocals acted as instruments, buried under the drum assaults. Subtle pulls off the genre-less label nobly, not even close to hip hop or techno or funk or rock, but somehow all of them at once. They released a queasy clutter of styles monkey-piling onto each other—think old-school boom-bap under haunting sax loops over Beach Boys harmonies and Prince falsettos, if that makes any sense. The resulting sound collage was sometimes transcendent, and sometimes just noisy. The total sonic envelopment could have been a religious experience if the crowd had moved around a little more. Basically, it's just music for the coming apocalypse.
Devin The Dude at High Noon Saloon
In the midst of a heavy (and fitting) Madison fog advisory, Devin The Dude and his Coughee Brothaz crew came to the High Noon Saloon on Wednesday for a party with plenty of old fans and a few drunk revelers. The dark and cozy confines suited the squad well. Despite such live-hip-hop staples as unbilled openers and technical difficulties, Devin's solid set of fan favorites and a few new joints almost justified the wait.
Local DJ Man Mantis (of Stink Tank and Dumate) did a commendable job manning the sound for a handful of opening acts and keeping the crowd warm between them. By the time Devin and the Coughee Brothaz came on, the standing room was tense with expectation. When they opened the greenroom door, the room was filled with a pine-fresh scent. A frat guy tried to get into the greenroom, only to be turned away and stagger off with a goofy, guilty look on his face. Pot zombies littered the floor.
Coughee Brothaz and original Odd Squad members Jugg Mugg and Rob Quest each took solo turns, all skittering drums and impossible bass, before the Dude made his grand entrance while the sound cut out. After a 10-minute wait, or “Coughee break,” “To Tha X-Treme” came through just as the Brothaz finished up an impromptu a cappella (“smoking that weed, feeling fine…”). The DJ stretched his arms in boredom behind the turntables, two mic-less comrades got the head-nodding going, and Rob hopped to his own beat. Devin swooped in and out of rap and sing-song. Early in the set, he dipped deep into his catalog, pulling up a number of tracks from his relatively obscure first LP—all weed-heavy anthems for the core fans.
The Coughee Brothaz didn’t provide much but (a)moral support, but Devin was on point vocally as always. His helium rhymes and syrup falsetto alone made it worth the wait. After the cult hits culminated with “Lacville ’79,” Devin trotted out newer stuff and debated with Coughee Brotha K.B. about which women were preferable, those under or over 150 pounds in weight (Devin is for the former). The stage show was smooth, well-established, and blunted—or, in Devin's words, “It’s the same old shit / but I think we ain’t gon' quit.” A second Coughee break segued into two slow burners, and some dude sat down by the soundman and almost fell off the chair after falling asleep. He looked like he'd had a good night.
