Recap P.O.S. at the Turf Club

In preparation for his upcoming set at Coachella on Friday, P.O.S. kicked off his week with an impromptu show at the Turf Club last night. Everything had to be done by 11 p.m. so that the weekly Jazz Implosion could happen downstairs in the Clown Lounge, so Marijuana Deathsquads, a mash-up band featuring the members of Building Better Bombs (Ryan Olson, Isaac Gale, Ben Ivascu, and P.O.S. as Stef Alexander) and P.O.S.’ tour DJ, Plain Ole Bill, took the stage well before 8 p.m. They played one song, or maybe just one experiment: a 15-minute collage of beats, scratching, scroggly synths, and wailing and screaming. That may sound unpleasant, but it wasn’t at all. It’s not hard to see Marijuana Deathsquads as an incubator for sounds and ideas that will later come to fruition in Building Better Bombs or in Alexander’s work under the P.O.S. moniker.

Fellow Rhymesayer Toki Wright led the crowd through a boisterous set that featured several guests, including rapper St. Paul Slim and a student of Wright’s from McNally Smith College of Music. Wright, who was waving a towel the entire time and drenched in sweat by the end of his set, takes this rap shit seriously, even when it’s a last-minute thing. “Stef called me this morning,” he reported from the stage, “and said, ‘Do you want to rap?’ And I always want to rap.”

Alexander’s been working on incorporating live instrumentation into his P.O.S. sets for some time now, but it’s finally paying dividends with the current lineup. The live guitar he’d previously added to tracks like “P.O.S. Is Ruining My Life” and “Never Better” never completely worked; it always seemed like an afterthought and took away from the fierce charisma he exuded when wielding a mic. But with Gale doing most of the guitar work, Plain Ole Bill and Olson tag-teaming patches, and, most important, Ivascu’s volcanic, fluid drumming, Alexander put on his most organic and inventive P.O.S. set yet.

Focusing on last year’s stellar Never Better, P.O.S. swerved from “Let It Rattle” to “Graves (We Wrote The Book)” to “Optimist (We Are Not For Them)” with nary a hitch, the band rolling over song transitions and Ivascu relentlessly propelling everything forward. Alexander jumped into the crowd for what he called a “minute-and-35-second mosh pit” during “Yeah Right (Science, Science),” and that’s what he got. It was surely the first mosh pit the Turf has seen in a while.

At the end of “Drumroll (We're All Thirsty)”—a song that provoked another pit—Alexander began pounding along on a floor tom and snare, and it became clear that this is what a P.O.S. set should be: a glorious celebration of sound and fury and passion and community. When the song roiled to a close, Alexander seemed to agree. “It’s a good sign when you’re a rapper, and someone comes up to the stage and goes, ‘RAAAWWWRRR!’” he said, lifting his right hand in the universal two-horned symbol of rock.

Before coming back for an encore of “De La Souls” from 2006’s Audition, P.O.S. closed the set with Never Better's most anthemic track, “Purexed,” promising that he’d be around town in unexpected places for the rest of the week, getting ready for Coachella. At the end of the song, as the organ swelled, Alexander entreated, “When I put the mic in the air, let’s all go: TA-DA!” Ta-da, indeed.