Recap Pterodactyl at The Frequency

Brooklyn’s Pterodactyl sure picked a lousy night to park its van in Madison. Thursday through Saturday, The Frequency pretty much has a built-in audience of at least 25 that's ready to watch anything that hits the stage. Unfortunately, this was a Sunday show, which can turn any venue into a place where vibe and curiosity go to die. By the time (i.e., in the wee hours of Monday) Pterodactyl kicked into shrill set-opener “No Sugar,” only a fraction of the tiny audience who watched Chapel Hill show-opener Lemming Malloy remained. While Decider admits to enjoying the ear-perking weirdness on the band's recent album, Worldwild, the songs didn’t translate so well at The Frequency.

The biggest issue was the inconsistent drumming of Matt Marlin, who on the album sounds like he could hold his ground against contemporaries like Parts And Labor’s Chris Weingarten and Hella’s Zach Hill. Marlin was often too busy for his own good, killing the momentum of the tunes by awkwardly missing beats in virtually every measure. The chirpy vocals of bassist-guitarist Jesse Hodges and guitarist Joe Kremer often got buried alive under avalanches of hissing feedback and screeching guitar noise, as Hodges avoided the low end of his bass guitar like the Black Plague. Sadly, the only tune that seemed to do the recording justice was deafening set-closer “Share The Shade.”

Luckily, a strong cast of openers saved the show from total disaster. Self-labeled “steampunks” Lemming Malloy kicked things off with a colorful set of nerdy prog-pop from its latest album, The Return Of The Norfolk Regiment. Besides the Industrial Revolution-era clothing the band wore onstage, there wasn't anything particularly "steamy" or "punky" about the North Carolina act. Vocalist Jay Cartwright led the quartet through each tune with engaging melodies from his heavily modified keytar (which he refers to as a "marvelon"). Between tunes, Cartwright engaged the audience with amusing stage banter about playing at a sci-fi convention and guitarist Joe Mazzitelli’s digestive tract.

After Madisonian duo Icarus Himself played an icy set of morose folk-pop from its recent CD, Coffins, a Long Beach, Calif., power-pop group called Bella Novela hammered out a raw set that drew equally on Pat Benatar and Iron Maiden. Drummer Jannea McClure pummeled away at her kit with heaps of intensity, and guitarist Jacob Heath’s dizzying riffing collided with the soulful howls of singer-keyboardist Jackie Ojeda. Bella Novela’s set pulled largely from its latest EP, Summer Loving, which the group managed to sell to most of the attendants with its tight performance.

While it's true that having to play demoralizing Sunday night shows is a huge part of touring (or being in a band in general), the bands impressed the tiny crowd enough to sell a relatively large amount of merch—which always translates into much-needed gas money for the out-of-town bands. If nothing else, it proved that the people who crawl out of their caves to see a show on a Sunday night are often more interested in seeing music than getting drunk to live background noise.