Bruar Falls last Friday bore witness to two essential aspects of CMJ: the overexposure and instant ubiquity borne of industry hype, and how the circus-like nature of the festival can actually cause people to inadvertently overlook bills with high-profile artists.
The afternoon show allowed for a demonstration of the second phenomenon. The normally-a-two-piece {mi-gu} took the opportunity to expand to a four piece, featuring Sean Lennon and Cibo Matto's Yuka Honda. The first half of the set, precisely choreographed psychedelic blues from main members Yuko Araki and Hirotaka Shimizu, was pleasant, but Shimizu's pinch harmonics played right into a terrible stereotype of Japanese music -- formal precision over emotional expression. With the addition of Lennon and Honda, though, the set became more varied, gaining energy and momentum. By the time Lennon had ripped off an unexpectedly raw and blistering guitar solo, mi-gu had convinced me there was some real substance behind their formal perfection and new age spirituality.
TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe and Gerard Smith, performing as {Fake Male Voice}, proceeded to set up with little fanfare. While Gerard manned a sampler, keyboard, and a host of pedals to produce minimal beats, Tunde sat calmly in chair, sang, and turned some knobs. The results were somewhere in between usual TVOTR fare and electro-acoustic improvisation. While there wasn't much to grab onto in the gradual ebb and flow of vocal delay without solid song structures, the set was short, sweet, and proved that Tunde can entertain adequately with a bare minimum of resources.
The evening show kicked off with Brooklyn's premiere indie pop trio, {Knight School} (full disclosure: I played music in the past with one of the band members). A Knight School set, and this one was no exception, is a pretty good encapsulation of what Brooklyn is about right now, so it's surprising that CMJ's hordes weren't as rabid about their show as some others. While some of their songs tended to blend together, standouts like "Meathead Hurricane" and "Pregnant Again" highlighted their tip-top songwriting chops and understated black humor. When they hit on all cylinders, their chemistry and sound were the sort that hipsters drool over.
{The Smith Westerns} (pictured) are another story. They're a band with good songs, a good look, tons of shows ahead of them, and maybe not adequate perspective or experience to deal with it all. Their show at Bruar Falls was smack in the middle of a three-day, seven-set CMJ run, and lead singer Cullen Omori seemed to be caught in the whirlwind. He still led the band through their T-Rex-inspired garage rock with an admirable lack of sweat, but -- unsurprising for a man of his tender age -- his stage persona needs some work. With the bar as packed as I'd ever seen it, comments about the crowd's "modest applause" unfortunately won't ingratiate the band to anyone.
[Photo: rg karlic]
