Max Tundra / Deastro

Playing to a morosely undernourished room, the increasingly sensible pairing of Detroit’s Deastro and not-Detroit’s Max Tundra received very little love from Portland Friday night, a void (of rapport, affection, and general acceptance c/o the audience) that’s increasingly worrisome. A month or so ago I attended a Future of the Left/…Trail of Dead bill at Dante’s, and though the venue itself is laid out with the economy and sonic wherewithal of a laundromat with brimstone-flavored decor, the place should have been packed, at least given how rare it was to find FOTL in this country, finally touring behind mostly unanimous critical praise, in a squat, intimate bar. It wasn’t—maybe 25 people showed up before the tumescent turd of Trail of Dead recognized they were only good ten years ago and played a set comprised mostly of their golden age cuts—which was tolerable until some jerkoff in the audience yelled out “Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues” and Falco responded, “We were going to play that song until you just screamed that out,” or something similar, a funny if predictable rejoinder I thought before I saw a YouTube clip of the band playing the following night, same tour, a devastating version of that cherished Do Dallas (2002) opener and knew, in my heart of hearts, that if that Portland fuck hadn’t screamed out those three words I could have finally realized one of my top five live music dreams.

Or recall how at this year’s MFNW Fucked Up screeled bloody murder to a quarter-filled Wonder Ballroom (and the show was free); or how last year Les Savy Fav, a must-see live show by any account, could barely achieve the same numbers after at least 200 people emptied post fucking Ratatat; or the wry voices taunting Yourself and the Air’s not being from Chicago but from just outside it, as if they’re Kid Rock or something; or the risible yawns heard through Chad VanGaalen’s surprise twenty-minute showing of his animated film, an unexpected treat if ever there was one for a fan: you talk big, Portland.

So there was Deastro, one Randy Chabot and his recently acquired co-guitarist, playing to one lush, hirsute track after another, stippled with everyone’s favorite clacking, potato-chip beats, playing his young, addled id to death, and the floor was mostly empty. Guy even climbs an amp for no reason, with no provocation: warmed over, hermetically sealed applause. Then Max Tundra is introducing himself, charming accent sadly bringing a few more people to the floor in direct contrast to Chabot’s flat, nasally Michigan banter (this I also possess, as Chabot and I are from the same area outside of Detroit; it was a humbling reminder of how I’ll never escape that state’s relentless gray), and he spasms enchantingly to seemingly every sputtered beat spit out of his simple props. His set is almost all of his new record; his hands are preternaturally over his head, splayed out, fingers jazz’d; he pulls out a melodica (from his pleated-front khakis, like a gun) that he plays three notes on; he carts around a glockenspiel that I swear he never plays—that is, until the ten-minute-long hyperglycemic cover of “So Long, Farewell” encourages the audience to act alive, chiming the instrument through sheer force of communal will; he just stops, lights go on, one or two people buy an LP. It was a meticulous, digestible, engaging night of big, warm electropop.

And practically no one was there. So go see Califone on Friday at the Mission Theater is what I mean.