By Samuel Rubenfeld
Attempting to mix the arena rock sound of U2 and the dream-pop side of older shoegaze bands, Longwave worked in fits and starts on Saturday night at the Mercury Lounge.
The Brooklyn-based band, fresh off a trip to Austin, Tex. for four performances during the South by Southwest festival, performed for a sold-out crowd in the tiny Houston St. venue. The lifeless capacity crowd witnessed a band struggling to find its own identity, despite forming nearly 10 years ago.
Frontman Steve Schlitz has the posturing down for a band ready to play Giants Stadium, but he needs songs with momentum first. The songs would start off promisingly enough, with melodic verses, big choruses and a noisy interlude. But just as they would hit a groove ready for atmospheric exploration and shoegaze-ready shredding, Schlitz would stomp on a guitar pedal, the song would stop and the crowd would sit silent for a second before reacting, as if they were expecting another note to come from the silence.
The band has ties to luminaries in the indie-rock universe, including The Strokes (who have said they are big fans) and Mercury Rev, who share both a producer and a former member with Longwave, Paul Dillon, who left to lead Silver Rockets (who ironically sound like a more self-assured version of Longwave).
But the band does have some promise: the songs the band said were off their just-recorded, as-yet untitled fourth album were noisier, more urgent and angrier than any of the other material. These songs had the legs missing from the rest of the set: the songs actually went where they appeared to be going, with a strong rhythm section giving a backbone to the effects-laden feedback coming from the two guitarists.
Maybe plodding around on RCA for its last two albums, and not yet having a record label to release this one has lit a fire under them.
The openers were better, for the most part. Frightened Rabbit, a much buzzed-about band from Glasgow, sounded like another band with whom they share a hometown, The Twilight Sad, but with one major difference, when the Twilight Sad hide behind atmosphere, Frightened Rabbit hit harder, louder and faster, and are catchier as a result. The drummer broke both his sticks in the first five minutes of their 40-minute set; he is a power drummer of the Josh Garza (The Secret Machines) aesthetic, pounding away with reckless abandon.
Via Audio, New Yorkers by way of Boston’s Berklee College of Music, pounded out earnestly upbeat pop music with a dance edge to it. There’s a sense the band truly feels as upbeat as their music implies-frontwoman Jessica Martins grinned ear-to-ear as she danced behind her keyboard and microphone. Via Audio doesn’t care that hipsters love irony and as a result, their too-short set was a wonderful breath of fresh air.
Despite a frustrating set short on momentum by Longwave, they show promise, finally, and without yet having the backing of a major label.
Longwave’s new upcoming untitled album looks to have a sharper edge than previous works. (kevchino.com)