By Samuel Rubenfeld
Discernable vocals were hard to come by this Sunday night in Brooklyn-and sometimes not at all-as three shoegaze bands showcased their noise-making talents in front of an alarmingly small crowd in Williamsburg.
The Twilight Sad, a dream-pop band from Glasgow, Scotland, creates a pop sound that mirrors some shoegaze tendencies on its breakout record “Fourteen Autumns, Fifteen Winters.” But live, the band is visceral, violent and cathartic.
Featuring a chainsaw guitar cutting over thick, malleable bass lines and bone-crushing drums, The Twilight Sad hardly sound like its recorded self. Each and every song pushed the envelope harder, louder, faster and more intense.
“Cold Days from the Birdhouse” was the only familiar track, mostly because that was the one with recognizable lyrics. Frontman James Graham, with his sonorous vocals rising above the mix only this one time, was distraught throughout the set.
He threw the mic stand around with reckless abandon, almost taking out the other band members in the process.
There were approximately 100 people in a venue that holds 500 and the small crowd saw something from another world.
Graham joked around with the crowd between songs, trying to lighten the dour mood of the hipsters in his midst, hoping perhaps one of them would show the smallest inkling emotion whatsoever while witnessing destruction onstage. His banter led to requests from some audience members. Guitarist Andy MacFarlan became known as “Baby Beck” for his likeness to the eclectic musician and was cursed out by a fan because he wouldn’t play the song three people wanted.
The hour-long set was marred by a major power outage. The band was playing so hard that it blew out all of the monitors, half the lights and the computerized mixer operated by the sound technicians.
Though they were not able to hear what was playing for half the set, the guys soldiered on anyway, after taking a few minutes to find out what the problem was exactly.
Opening the show were two bands on the rise. The Big Sleep, local to Brooklyn, is almost metal-gaze. With riffs that owe as much to Zeppelin as they do to Sonic Youth, the mostly instrumental band is known for its booming yet ambient overdriven sound. They sound as if they are constantly writing the score to muscle movie “Vanishing Point” with Josh Homme in the drivers’ seat.
Other Passengers is another band turning in shoegaze gems from Bushwick, just down the road from the venue. Coming off a powerful performance at Ludfest on the Lower East Side, the band is more straightforward and accessible in its approach to psych-gaze but the appeal is in the instability of the frontman and the ferocity of the guitar work. With pupils the size of saucers, he leans forward into the crowd and it is impossible to tell whether to commit him to an institution or to participate in his version of psychotropic mind-expansion.
(myspace.com/thetwilightsad)