June Show Roundup: The Books, Alex Robinson, Zola Jesus

Hey! I'm a jackass!

I’ve been fortunate to attend three shows in the last two weeks so here is a round up of each:

The Books w/ Via Tania at Millenium Park June 21

This looks to be the first of a few great free shows this summer at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion; most of the good indie shows are Mondays which are days I work. The hipsters were in full force for this one, I was under the impression that The Books were a very niche group. I could see hipsters jumping on anything vaguely indie and free. While this blog does not support hipsterdom, there is some amount of joy to be taken from seeing a few hundred twentysomethings that look like homeless people congregating in one location (can’t wait for Pitchfork).

The bizarre part about shows at Millenium Park is that people always choose to sit in the grass first. This makes little sense if you are there to see a band so these people have to be awful summer festival goers that only appear in order to drink overpriced beer but its great for those actually wanting to see a band since it insures that seats will universally be available close to the stage.

Chicago group Via Tania, although the singer sounded like she was Australian, opened the show. The beards I was with did not enjoy this at all and I barely did. The group plays very sleepy music that once and awhile recalls Beach House but is more similar to generic “soulful” female singer/songwriter music. The quartet switched around instruments a lot and of course the singer played a ukulele at one point. It seems an unfortunate essentiality that indie bands have ukuleles these days. The style of music didn’t make a lot of sense for an early evening performance, if this had been at 2am in a smoky club and I wanted to go to sleep. What made the beards angry, and myself a little too, is that once and awhile the songs would start to crescendo a little but then stop before the song got anywhere. The worst was the last song, which was the best that Via Tania played. The singer strapped on an electric guitar and the group began to tear through a particularly bouncy song and then at the end started to kick up some Sonic Youth inspired noise rock. Things started to look up for Via Tania, at least they would be remembered for an awesome finish, but instead the noise stopped after ten seconds. What a tease.

Via Tania

The Books came on shortly after and quickly eased any misgivings that had arisen because of Via Tania. They played in front of a screen that was certainly not adequate for the size of a park but was perfect at my distance from the stage. To go along with their sample heavy songs are constructed VHS quality videos that are fairly choppy but often humorous. Since The Books play sitting down, the clips really help to improve their live performance. The three members were able to play the songs with the same technical precision as on the record but the samples were usually louder than the band so some times they were nearly drowned out.

Their set was a good mix consisting of some new songs from the forthcoming “The Way Out”, my personal favorite “The Lemon of Pink” and what I assume were from “Lost and Safe.” I don’t listen to The Books enough to know all of their songs but I’m pretty sure “Thought for Food” was neglected. Two personal highlights were “Time” from “The Lemon of Pink” and a new one “A Cold Freezin’ Night.” The latter song consists of samples from talkboy recorders that they found at some thrift store. Its incredibly funny and unlike the classical new age kind of stuff they usually do.

Towards the end of the show, the people in the seats collectively looked back to see hundreds of people dancing to minimal electronic beats and neo-classical music. Huh. This culminated with a few aborted attempts of hippy hipsters trying to dance at the front of the stage and being shooed away by security. During the last song, those same hipsters managed to bring a few dozen people, nowhere near the amount of people dancing in the back, to the front and eventually rushed the stage. As overweight police officers took the stage the situation seemed pretty grim but all the hipsters calmly left the stage. Still, the fact that there was a near riot at a Books show is pretty absurd. I can get behind the flagrant disregard for authority but no hippy bohemian bullshit will be supported by me.

Awful photo of people rushing the stage

Alex Robinson La Spiaza June 26

Former Plasmatonics front man Alex Robinson played his first solo show June 26 at La Spiaza in Wheaton exactly one year after the final Plasmatonics show. The show was partly in recognition of the release of Robinson’s solo debut. Less of a proper album, “Demonstrations” has acoustic versions of Plasmatonics songs as well as Robinson originals written during various periods. Expect a proper review soon.

Robinson was armed with a glittered acoustic and ran through nearly 90 minutes of material. As always his guitar playing was in top form and even on his acoustic, Alex killed it with his unique brand of punk inflected glam rock. In addition to the originals he ran through a few choice covers including The Replacements “Alex Chilton”, two Elliott Smith songs “Say Yes” and “Miss Misery” (he threw on the suit jacket during these two), and an impromptu run through of The La’s “There She Goes”, which was very well received by the audience.

Robinson playing to an engrossed crowd

Perhaps the most applause was given for Plasmatonics classic “No Expectations”, which Robinson dedicated to Plasmatonics drummer Mike Mazur. Robinson was very emotional during these moments but was excited that his long time creative foil would be moving back in early July. In attendance were many GE note worthies that are all seldom in the same place anymore; the show was a triumph not just for Robinson but for all who were there. Many of them have been through a great deal of turmoil and by being there it represented a big “fuck you I made it.”

Left: Helen Keller's Revenge member Jeff Klausner
Right: Former Necrosludge drummer Ross Maki
Both wave their lighters at an emotionally charged moment

Zola Jesus w/ Dada Trash Collective, Jabon Schubas June 27

I didn’t think I would get to go to this but I am glad a bearded friend decided to make the trip with me to Schubas. I had some initial resignations about going to this due to my having to work the next morning and having to take the 12:40am train home just to take the 8:40am in is just absurd. The AV Club recently posted a Q&A about shows they wished they had gone to so I didn’t want to regret this. I’ve fallen hard for Zola Jesus or rather Nika Danilova over the past few months and I didn’t want to miss this. Her Stridulum EP is one of my favorites this year and I knew I would be pretty disappointed if I didn’t get to hear those songs live.

We got there quite early and had to kill time just to wait for the doors to open so we got to witness this guy setting up this elaborate set up of numerous TVs stacked on top of each other connected to a couple VCR’s. It was a pretty complicated setup that I don’t need to get into but there were a bunch of bizarre and humorous images projected throughout the three sets. Seeing this one guy set up for most of the time we were sitting there I assumed he would be starting first but instead this guy dressed in an alien priest getup (with green mask) ran through the crowd and jumped on stage. This was apparently Jabon who as my bearded companion said was “the Andrew W.K. of Witch House.” I guess it was a lot like Witch House but his demented electronica was pretty hard to classify. The guy definitely had a sense of humor though; he would bust out some moves on stage and once ran into the audience in order to “act a fool.” The weirdest part came when some jazzy show tune came on and he started to sing along, at this point except for some weird box he talked into and looped he had not yet spoken. He then started doing a sort of demented stand up routine about how he had all these recordings of nobody celebrities’ stomach noises from when he used to record books on CASSETTE (he would randomly shout cassette rather frequently). Then he played some stomach noises (Kurt Douglas!) and got back to the music. Then in the middle of a song he ran off and the next guy came up and began to get ready.

Jabon strikes a pose

There’s not a lot to say about Dada Trash Collage. Pretty much a one man Animal Collective, Panda Bear, he turned some knobs and sang. His much was pretty fun if not really derivative.

At the very least he had awesome images

Then after clearing away the TVs and the gear from the first two bands, Zola Jesus took the stage. Looking around there were only about forty people there, twice as many as during the openers, and quite a few Goths. Pictures of a blonde Nika had popped up and there she was bleached blond; from what I’ve read she’s trying to move away from being associated with the Goth community. If only they knew. I had no idea she was so little, which makes it all the more astounding how that enormous voice is come from such a small body. Thankfully, if she had not died her hair she would have all but disappeared on the stage. She has a solidified back band now consisting of three keyboardists and a drummer who pounded the hell out of his toms the whole show. The band was great and really gave the Stridulum songs to life.

The best part of course was Nika; her voice was amazing and she definitely has quite a deal of stage presence. She prowled the stage and even the crowd during, I think, “Run Me Out” where she crouched down and threw her black shaw over her head. The band breezed through all six songs on Stridulum, awesome, Sea Talk from “Tsar Bomba,” nice, and one song I didn’t know. They only played for about 30 minutes, which was pretty strange. She’s recorded more songs for a European re-release and supposedly has two more in the can for a US EP coming up plus she didn’t even play Clay Bodies off of “The Spoils.” I was left craving more, which in some ways is a good thing. The show was not perfect by any means but it was incredibly exciting to see a band in its infancy when you knew they were only going up. Zola Jesus is going to be huge and I’m privileged to have seen them right at the turning point.

Afterwards, Nika was standing in the bar part of Schubas. I really wanted to get my copy of Stridulum autographed, or get a photo with her. I get too nervous to talk to musicians I admire even though she’s my age and a college student. Except for being super cool and a great musician, there’s not too much to separate us but the fear that I might blurt out “I just want to love you” or something was enough that I though it best just to leave.