WHY? / Mount Eerie / No Kids

The respective frontmen of Mt. Eerie and WHY?, Phil Elvrum and Yoni Wolf, are an unlikely pair to share a bill. Especially with WHY? headlining, what with Elvrum being borderline deified in the Pacific Northwest, that guy all bona fide humble pie and Portland totally loving that kinda shit. It’s not even because their seemingly canyon-split brands of pop music come from disparate, maybe head-butting, places—Elvrum’s the stuff of hermetic rigor, dewy afflatus, and everything conceivably “lo-fi”; Wolf’s instead the obsessively detailed detritus of an urban life gone to fucked up, manic repetition. No, to see a lineup like this (with Vacouver’s No Kids at the very onset) play out is worth skipping Grizzly Bear on the other side of the Willamette. This is a lineup that shouldn’t be, that may never be again (I think to myself melodramatically). Backstage can be a volatile place after all—Elvrum the hippie alongside Wolf the hipster; Elvrum all awed and respectful while Wolf’s pissed and vulgar—and stereotyping young semi-successful indie musicians may prevent some dude with a beard toppling the rice cake table.

But Reality said, “OK,” and Karl Blau did an expectedly weird-ass cover of “The Blackest Purse” (only Karl Blau can say the word “shit” and make me cringe) and somehow these squealy-mouthed folks, crawling from their K- and Anticon-holes, found one other on the stage of the Wonder Ballroom. Mt. Eerie was there to test-run what could be only one of many instances of his Wind’s Poem (2009) band, the “black wooden metal” or somesuch conglomeration of likeminded do-gooders gone beastly, a third of which was composed of two-thirds of No Kids, including Nick Krgovich, who performed some staid, even meek, harmonies and fulfilled assorted rhythmic opportunities for the record. No Kids did what they were there to do, I suppose, and made for pleasant warm-ups, the brand of outfit well-pressed, pleated, and best left to stay propped up in one place. Like Dirty Projectors wallpaper: at one point, before stolidly slipping into a comfortable jam best balsa’d for Hampton Inn lobbies and re-carpeted elevators, Krgovich quietly asked the Ballroom’s control staff to switch to the “blue light” and, once bathed, played the exact tone of safely coquettish keyboard line that an aquamarine-tinged audience, growing impatient, could conversate over.

No Kids weren’t boring, exactly, just in looking back they took up so many milquetoast crosses they now seem to occupy a mostly negative space—the white to Mt. Eerie’s black, maybe. Elvrum’s set, an unflinching forty minutes, was an abridged Wind’s Poem, front-to-back, no filler, and often loud as fuck. Make the soles of one’s feet itchy loud; rend plaster from the crenellated walls into your gin loud. This was only bolstered by how demurely Elvrum introduced himself, speaking carefully, “Hello. We’re Mt. Eerie. We’re from Anacortes, Washington,” which might as well have been followed by telling the audience that he’s a human male and was holding an electric guitar. With a pause to ready his vicious-strumming arm, maybe retie the band on his sweatpants, Elvrum turned to face his two drummers and set out bravely into “Wind’s Dark Poem,” seducing his bassist closer into their druidic square. A truncated “Through the Trees” became a more welcoming proscenium for the turn-off that were the deer-in-headlights poses of the No Kids members at ancillary stage right and left positions, the song’s disarmingly sweet melody gaining hold in ways the album sometimes obfuscates, making clear, after the dinky intro and pummeling opener, for what type of simple effect Elvrum was aiming. As on the album, live Elvrum milked the dynamics metal ostensibly affords, seeming both ignorant of the nuances in the genre and totally satisfied by its most overt tendencies, unwilling to go further than he already had. But from the plain-faced divide between loud and not loud, Mt. Eerie was able to wrench a shuddering drama that unexpectedly carried me rapt through the entire appearance.

So, when “My Heart Is Not At Peace” grew a hairy pair and lurched from self-deprecating drip to despotic roar, I giggled and leaned forward in my chair; when “Between Two Mysteries” grew in intensity by simple virtue of its Reichian steel drum line climbing out from under Elvrum’s jittery guitar, I for a moment wished I wasn’t in the balcony, that I could ignore how one of my legs is substantially longer than the other and how standing for long periods of time really fucks up my dogs, let alone my back. Only when “Stone’s Ode” heralded the end of Mt. Eerie’s time with us, closing it all with a hush to combat the anti-hush that opened, did the surrounding din of voices and drinking and people ignoring Elvrum swing back into stark relief. If I was on the floor, that was when my body would start realizing it needed to shift from foot to foot. Thus I beheld Phil Elvrum’s tricky talent: in his obsessive grasp at pinning down, or at least representing, fleeting, powerful notions much bigger than him, details and minutiae are subsumed by sweeping, magnanimous emotions and bloated scopes. And frankly, after witnessing this newish Mt. Eerie, six-piece both blushing and snorting fire, I feel a bit ashamed for ragging on post-Microphones Elvrum so much, That Black Wooden Ceiling Opening EP (2008) is still pretty lame, though.

WHY? was less of a revelation if only because they played it closer to what I was there for in the first place. Sticking primarily to Alopecia (2008) cuts peppered liberally with the best off this year’s Eskimo Snow (“Against Me” and “The Blackest Purse”), an Elephant Eyelash (2005) joint thrown in for good measure and the obligatory yippee of audience recognition, Wolf proved more of an engaging stage presence than maybe even he knew he was capable. Flailing about, skinny limbs akimbo, his uncommon voice made more sense in person coming from that tiny, lithe frame, an observation akin to watching a dog and its owner resemble each other more and more with each passing day. Similarly, Andrew Broder, obviously not gunning to push out another Fog record, took lead on guitar and fucking shredded more than maybe even he knew he was capable of shredding. In fact, with WHY?, a prevalent theme for the night reared onto its hind legs, exposing its genitals: these guys all seemed suddenly pleased by how solidly their bands were coming together, how talented they were at these new directions they’ve taken with their music. This is not to mention WHY?’s drummer, who also happens to be Yoni Wolf’s brother, I want to eat him up he’s so good, that dumbly grinning morsel, that Raymond Babbitt savant acting as if he’s excited to discover, at that very wrinkle in time, that what he’s so natural at is actually useful given the circumstances. People talking through the whole set were even talking about how good this guy was.

And by the end of the night it became no clearer how the two bands found each other, what they really saw in each other besides shared awkwardness and an affinity to try something different at this point in their, by the standards of blog culture, rather long careers. Still, the billing made for a humbling night and a rejuvenation of faith, both for me and, I assume, for those on stage. Or, at least, that’s how it came off; as long as I’m reassured for now by the continuing relevance of two artists I’ve kept an eye on for some time, it’s easier to accept the deluge of flash-in-the-pan newbies and corresponding hype that’s made me feel like such a cynic—like such a disbeliever—as the decade comes to a superficial stopping point.