The loudest band in New York

I love free concerts. A free concert is like free food, except better, because when Ben & Jerry's gives away ice cream on Free Cone Day, you get a paltry, unsatisfying dollop of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough that lasts about three minutes on a hot day. A free concert is like an ice cream that lasts all evening. And depending on who's playing the show, you might end up with a natural high and a headache at the end of it, just like an evening-long ice cream.

The South Street Seaport is but one place in the city that you can see bands perform for free on a weekly basis. I wrote about the final show of last year's Seaport Music Festival here. Compared to last year's lineup (which included The National and Battles and Menomena and Au Revoir Simone), this year's list seemed less than exciting, but one band jumped right out at me: A Place to Bury Strangers.

You may never have heard them, but you've heard of bands like them -- bands whose reputation precedes them. I still remember one spring night in 2004 when I first heard of a band named Mute Math from my buddy Won. "You gotta listen to these guys," he said, handing me a demo CD. "They're probably the best band I've ever seen." Listening to the demo was like taking a shower on a weekday afternoon: unexpected and invigorating and optimistic.

In the case of A Place to Bury Strangers (APTBS), I'd heard one thing about them that's supposed to tell you everything you need to know about them: The Loudest Band in New York. Virtually every review I've read contains this description, but who can say who originated the phrase. Maybe the band made it up themselves. Maybe it's not important. But if you know me, you'll know that it's impossible for me not to seek out a band that lays claim to being the loudest in a city full of loud bands.

I mean, come on! THE LOUDEST BAND IN NEW YORK!

Apparently, this is a band so loud that the cops once shut down one of their shows, but not until an NYPD officer declared, "This band is sick."

So three Fridays ago, I went to see them at the Seaport Music Festival. The first opening band was Black Acid, who were just finishing their set when I got there. It's hard to feel bad about missing a band called Black Acid, so I didn't. Then the most bizarre band in the world took the stage -- a second opening act called King Khan and the Shrines. (Do not visit their Myspace page unless you're sure you want to.) These guys are so obscure they don't even have their own Wikipedia entry. It was their first show in the United States, apparently, so nobody knew any of their songs, but that didn't stop them from rocking out. They played a hyperactive blend of ska, '50s rock-n-roll, and punk, if you can imagine that. Oh yeah, they had a whole brass section. And a go-go dancer who belly-danced and waved gold pompoms on stage during the entire set. And their drummer had more facial hair than ZZ Top. And -- get this -- the lead singer was a foul-mouthed Indian man who sounded like Screamin' Jay Hawkins and looked like he'd just walked off the set of a Bollywood blockbuster.

This band was a menace to the public, who, against their better judgment, began dancing in the middle of Pier 17 like the maniacs dancing on the stage. King Khan was inscrutable and indefatigable and hilarious; for forty-five minutes, he whipped the crowd into an awe-struck frenzy of laughter and herky-jerky hopping.

Now, this was interesting. These guys were supposed to open for APTBS, which struck me as a tad dissonant. This became evident when, at about 8:30 PM, APTBS took the stage to a long, metallic rumble from lead singer/guitarist Oliver Ackermann. In my mind, there are three things to understand about Ackermann:

1. He makes his own guitar pedals.
2. He is the only guitarist on the band, which means he has to make the most noise.
3. He does not interact with the crowd at live shows very much at all. He didn't even address us when the band started the set, which is not that weird once you realize that APTBS is just a shoegaze band that happens to play very loud music.

When APTBS really got going, things started getting dangerous and weird. Dangerous because the band really is, quite possibly, the loudest band in this city. Weird because a band that straddles the two genres of shoegaze and noise rock is bound to attract different kinds of people who may not necessarily get along with one another. This became clear when three young people who looked like they'd just stepped off a plane from the Glastonbury Festival began moshing in the front, bumping violently into people in the process. Two guys standing directly behind them decided that this was rude behavior and weren't afraid to say so, at which point the wild trio stopped just long enough to shrug their shoulders and went right back at it. This was weird because I'm not usually conflicted about what constitutes proper behavior at any given rock concert. I mean, when you're at a rock show, you rock out. But when you're at a shoegaze rock show, and the stage lights remain dim for most of the set, are you only supposed to gaze at the musicians gazing at their shoes?

At one point, the music was so loud that even the press photographers (who were standing behind the speakers, not in front of them) had to cover their ears. I have never covered my ears at a rock show before; to me, that's like closing your eyes if the view at a tropical beach becomes too beautiful. I looked around at the people standing next to me and 75% of them had their fingers in their ears. The other 25% looked back at me in a funny way, as if to say, "Our ears won't be okay in the morning, will they?"

APTBS played a blistering 40-minute set, during which Ackermann destroyed his red Fender Jaguar and then hurled it over his head by its strings. Then, with a muffled "thank you" and a rapid brightening of the stage lights, it was unceremoniously over. The crowd dispersed quickly, dazed and slightly disoriented.

I couldn't hear much for the next 24 hours.

A band called Battles

Tonight, I went to see Battles perform at the South Street Seaport Music Festival. The night was fun for several reasons, but the two biggest are (1) the concert was free, and (2) Battles is the greatest live band I have ever seen.

Okay, the second reason is hyperbolic and possibly wrong. But consider: I have not been to a U2 show, and I have not been to a Lightning Bolt show. Lightning Bolt released my favorite album of 2005, Hypermagic Mountain, and their live show is the stuff of legend (one of my co-workers attended a Lightning Bolt show in Brooklyn and told me that the crowd was so brutalized by the music that they started tearing umbrellas apart). I've also never seen Radiohead live, nor the Rolling Stones, nor Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, nor Rush. So it's possible that I'm missing out on something better than what I saw tonight. However, I have seen Mute Math. And I love Mute Math. I've spoken to Paul Meany, the lead singer of Mute Math, and Roy Mitchell-Cardenas, the bassist. Mute Math is one of my all-time favorite bands.

But here is the truth: Battles is better than Mute Math. Battles is what Mute Math will be in fifteen years.

Anyway, about the concert: I got there really early. The stage was set up outdoors on Pier 17 at the seaport, between a giant schooner and a giant Pizzeria Uno, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. There were already people waiting in front of the stage. The crowd was made up of really skinny boys and the not-so-skinny girls who love them. All the girls had blond highlights in their hair. Even the blond girls had blond highlights. One guy sitting at the front was reading Schindler's List and chainsmoking Kool XLs.

I sat and waited along with everyone else. A young man wandered over and asked me who was playing tonight, and when I said, "Deerhunter. And Battles," he looked at me like I'd just spoken Swahili. I'll bet he was expecting me to say, "Radiohead."

The opening band, Deerhunter, came on at 7:25 PM, almost an hour after I'd gotten there. The lead singer was the skinniest guy I've ever seen. This is not hyperbole at all. Every time he stepped on his stompboxes, I thought he would break a hip. But he didn't. The rest of the band wasn't nearly as interesting, but the bassist would do a stately bow to the audience at the end of each song, which was kind of funny and helpful at the same time because if he hadn't bowed, I wouldn't have known the song was over. Deerhunter made very competent noise-rock music with some ethereal banshee vocals, but they're young and have a while to go before I'd consider buying one of their albums.

Deerhunter played a forty-minute set. The guy reading Schindler's List moved on to Jodi Picoult's The Pact, but he never got up from the ground and barely looked up from his book during the entire set. This was awkward because he was sitting right at the front, and right at my feet. I figured he was just waiting for the main act.

Battles finally came on at about 8:30. The bassist came up first, noodling around with his instrument all by himself, making the signal loop and feed back into itself. Then, one at a time, the rest of the band got up on stage. Complete sonic mayhem ensued. Unless you've heard a noise-rock band, or a really loud math-rock band, I have no adequate method of describing what Battles songs sound like. I suppose you could listen to the samples on their Myspace site, but samples can't properly convey the layered noise that proceeded from the speakers tonight. I tried to put myself in the position of someone who'd only ever listened to, say, the Beach Boys. These are the questions I'd ask: Are their instruments in tune? Are they even playing instruments? Are all their amplifiers broken? Why does the drummer have to play his drums using the butt-end of his sticks? Doesn't he know that it will make his drums sounds too loud? And why do the other guys insist on playing multiple instruments at the same time? Why are they pulling cables and wires in and out of their keyboards and computers and signal processors in the middle of a song? Why all the fiddling with knobs? What? Why can't I hear you?

This reminds me of the general inability of Americans to accurately describe the smell and taste of durians.

That's the unfortunate thing. I had a blast at the Battles show, but I can't explain it to you. You'll just have to go to their Myspace site, listen to the track called "Atlas" and imagine the band performing the song live, exactly the way it sounds on the recording. And if you can imagine finding joy in seeing and listening to that live performance, in understanding how those bizarro noises are generated on stage, and in headbanging to the ruthlessly consistent drum beat along with three thousand other people, then you can imagine how it was tonight.