Blood On The Wall
8 out of 10 - Great. Good show.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Holocene, Portland OR
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It’s been a long time since things were the way they used to be. Time was some consonant feeling, had great import in live music. Dangerous-sounding bands would play in warehouses, places with makeshift amenities, likely in the dangerous part of town—or at least somewhere suburban parents thought was fraught with heathen worry. Only the beer flowed into willing glasses with any measure of predictability. All else was a matter of buyer beware.
Seeing a band like New York City’s Blood On The Wall, the context would be dirty floors, vital structures—like bathrooms and ceilings—compromised; the crowd would be rough, collars decidedly blue, if wearing any at all, on thrift store t-shirts. And even then, a noticeable percentage would have some sleeve or pant leg torn askance, compromised by the proverbial mud and blood and beer. Blood On The Wall is as frenetic and noise-ridden as their name might suggest: let fury beget fury. Right?
On a rare dry Wednesday night in April, in Portland Oregon (a town not lacking in honest character bars), Blood On The Wall uncorked a 50-minute show, filled with all the lovely vengeance of a left cross to the ear socket. Plugged-in on the clean, white stage, the trio cut a rough contrast to the lucid, watery lights projected behind them. Brad Shanks, straw blond, noise-weaving guitarist (à la Thurston Moore), lunged back and forth at his microphone, shrieking with an urgency bereft of self-consciousness. Reining him in with a diligent, no-frills bass, Courtney Shanks couldn’t be more opposite: stoic, eyes to the floor, almost melodic, while drum maven Zack Campbell’s pounding crescendo bonds it all. Their live sound, as it is in album form, is disparate in parts, but cohesive and filled with enthralling moments of beautiful disharmony.
The trio ran through tracks from their two criminally under-appreciated records, Liferz and Awesomer, to a dynamic, cyclonic effect, some of the best being the strut of “Mary Susan” and the Sex Pistols-esque, “Hibernation.” When Courtney stopped a few bars in on “Lightning Song,” the band laughed, then joked with some catharsis in their voices. “I’ve been skipping over this one,” she said, then started again with genuine urging from her mates. The fifty some odd onlookers never batted an eye, caught in their own cool, unaware of how to react to a genuine moment of uncertain performance. The song is a star, one of the best on Liferz, and Shanks pulled it off, never once bantering again with the crowd that seemed to be viewing an art installation more than a show of burning delivery. But such is the way in a lifestyle bar. No one is caught off guard because the guard is never down. It’s not possible when measuring the cynical moments before the next $6 drink.
This is one of those bands to see—anywhere. On a sidewalk, sidebar, anywhere on a stage near you, and certainly regardless of whether or not the context seems right; it’s a safe recommendation because the band is right. They will almost certainly persist in their frantic making.
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