When The Extraordinaires first took the stage, I decided that I was on acid. Before my eyes waxed with film, there were instruments covered in colors, a swordfish guitar and totem pole microphone, solid wires of lights elongated and gleaming. Then it occurred to me that I was not in fact on acid. Rather, it took only a few moments to decide that the band probably was.
The first sound to be disgorged from their collective mouth was a raucous barbershop-esque harmony in thirds. Although this seemed interesting enough, the subsequent barrage of whoops and hollers issued forth in alternating pitches (think slide whistle) grew immediately tiresome. There were indeed a few standout moments throughout The Extraordinaires' set, but they were only partially a result of the music itself. The comical replication of carnival sounds – the swing of an imaginary hammer, the ringing of a bell – was amusing to be sure, yet the attempt to replicate a similar uncouth experience akin to that of Man Man came up short.
Then it was Man Man's turn. An eclectic array of seemingly non-musical items were clustered on the keyboards – plastic tubes and small orange horns grouped in fours and spoons – all of which would play a part in the music of the evening. As the set progressed and Man Man filled the hall with music new and old (“Black Mission Goggles” and “Banana Ghost” from Six Demon Bag among them) , the excitement that Man Man exhumed proved infectious. Their feral antics, madness in their wild faces and wide eyes, were all directly transferred into the crowd. The swelling mass of people that had originally begun with one guy gradually moved until it consumed the whole, undulating with the movement of the music onstage.
A standout rendition of “Big Trouble” from their then-forthcoming album, Rabbit Habits, with its somber droning horns, was like the calls to the dead from a funeral procession. It followed into the swaggering line of the same horns, subdued and whining. The face of Pow Pow, the drummer of Man Man, was in a constant change, alternating from contorted broad smiles to lowered pensive brows. Everything was so busy on the stage it might have been overwhelming at times had it not been for the individual energies from those on stage.
After Man Man left the stage, at least half of the once very dense crowd had vanished. As a longtime fan of The Unicorns and enthusiastic listener of Return to the Sea, I had been just as excited (if not more) to see the final performance of the evening. In comparison to Man Man, Islands’ onstage setup was sparse and unassuming. The emptiness that the absence of Man Man’s equipment had left was hardly altered with the exception of a few amps, keyboards, and mics. Yet it wasn’t simply the stage that had ostensibly changed, but the entire atmosphere of the hall. With the lack of a substantial audience, the air was no longer charged. There was something mildly depressing about it that even managed to infiltrate the actual set of Islands.
It seemed at first that Islands might have broken the funk with an absolute gem of a piece that I can only suppose would be appearing on the new album. The song itself was so stimulating with its multitude of layers – most especially the dual violin lines of Alex and Sebastian Chow that sparked an army of goose bumps up and down my arms– that, in spite of the swiftly forming mosh pit before me, I was taken away from everything for that brief amount of time. Which brings me to the part of the show that I am so reluctant to speak of: Although the majority of the mosh pit folks were gone, they had left in their wake some of the lamest people I’ve ever seen at The Blue Note. The mosh pit impersonation somehow managed (not sure how or why) to find a way to mosh to Islands – a feat in and of itself, though unbearably frustrating.
The rest of the evening continued suit. Like Man Man, Islands treated the audience to a number of new and old songs (including “Swans (Life After Death)” and “Volcanoes,” with “Humans” as an encore), yet what I remember most about the evening was the audience's reaction after Nicholas Thorburn (a.k.a. Nick Diamonds) said “We’re Man Man,” then paused. “We’d like to thank Islands for playing with us...” Thing is, no one really seemed to notice. What a heartbreaker.
