Pitchfork

Spoon photos by Jason Bergman; AAM Promo day party photos by Ryan Muir; Above: Spoon

The Ponys [Roseland Ballroom; 7:30 p.m.]

Chicago-based four-piece the Ponys might sound like the kind of band that could succeed in a 3,000-plus-capacity room like Roseland, especially on this year's streamlined, consistent Turn the Lights Out. Three albums in, these guys have their live moves down, and their hazy, no-frills indie rock-- Pitchfork's Jason Crock approvingly dubbed it "Sonic Youth Lite"-- seems melodic enough to serve as a gateway to noisier stuff for Spoon's growing fanbase of skirt-chasers and frat boys. It wasn't, however, and it wasn't only the frat boys' fault. Singer/guitarist Jered Gummere's narcoticized murmurs were muddy and indecipherable, and there was a rote detachment to even the too-brief squalls of guitar noise. Maybe, a couple of weeks into their tour with Spoon, the Ponys are beginning to expect a listless audience-- and playing accordingly. "A few more and then Spoon's on," Gummere announced to the biggest cheers of the set. "They're OK, I guess."

Spoon [Roseland Ballroom; 8:30 p.m.]

It's a good time to be a scalper at a sold-out Spoon show. The dudes prowling 52nd Street before the Austin band's Roseland gig were turning would-be buyers away by the taxi-full if they weren't willing to cough up obscene prices. And many were. A half-an-hour before Spoon were officially set to start, one scalper told me he'd sold a ticket for as much as $60, and based on what I overheard, he might not even have been bullshitting. A couple of college-age guys who'd already bought tickets and been thrown out for fake IDs didn't even bother haggling-- they were literally pleading with the man to sell for what they had left in their wallets.



Spoon themselves have achieved a masterful balance between what those guys probably like-- beer, classic rock-- and what I like. It's going to become a precarious position to maintain as their fanbase grows and the media attention increases whenever they put out their next album, but on latest effort Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, the veteran four-piece achieve an expertly calibrated combination of gorgeous experimentation and upbeat, accessible romanticism, sounding as Billy Joel these days as Pixies. Judging by applause levels, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga was what many in the thousands-strong crowd were at Roseland to hear.

They got it, and a bit of back catalogue as well, in a concise, electrifying set. I haven't been to a venue this big in a while, so the instant weed smoke during opening song "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case" was good for an inward chuckle. The three-piece horn section on new songs like "Cherry Bomb" or Kill the Moonlight's "Jonathan Fisk" gave the songs a trebly punch, but both songs were uptempo rockers-- music more for fist-pumping and beer-drinking than stoned navel-gazing.





Spoon never let the audience get too comfortable, though. Britt Daniel's hoarse bark went through even the breeziest arrangements, such as in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga standout "The Underdog". The Radiohead-like "The Ghost of You Lingers" received perhaps the most muted reaction of the night, but the big-venue sound system helped its percussive glitches hit us in the guts after the pulsing synths put us at ease. On "I Turn My Camera On", one of several songs included from 2005's underrated Gimme Fiction, Daniel swapped shouts for falsetto coos, with bassist Rob Pope underpinning some Prince-ly funk. And many of the songs had discordant but economical guitar solos, which Daniel sometimes played with the instrument outstretched and held vertically, like a trophy.

Not that the show was ever flashy or indulgent. Daniel even kept the stage patter to a minimum, finally breaking his silence nearly halfway into the set in order to praise Spoon's label, Merge. I think he later called the show Spoon's biggest ever, though my ears may have missed a qualifying word. When the encore began, Daniel seemed truly impressed by the size of the crowd reaction. "That was a roar," he said tersely. A song later, he reached back to Girls Can Tell for "Everything Hits at Once", finishing the night with Gimme Fiction's "My Mathematical Mind".

"And when you believe, they call it rock and roll," Daniel sang earlier in the night, on "The Beast and the Dragon Adored" (also from Gimme Fiction). As he repeated the phrase, the words "rock and roll" became distorted by tinny echoes, moving from a traditional rock outlook recalling the Lovin' Spoonful to the weirder, wider musical universe also covered by this site. A guy I talked to before the set told me his favorite artists included Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty-- "The stuff our parents used to listen to was actually pretty good," he said. Spoon's challenge going forward will be satisfying both this guy and the guys who also appreciate some weirdness. Tonight, they did both.

A Place to Bury Strangers [The Delancey; 11 p.m.]

A Place to Bury Strangers weren't "the loudest band in New York" this night, as other press outlets and the band's MySpace page proclaim. They might've been the most punctual, though. The industrial-tinged Brooklyn dream-pop three-piece didn't deafen me the way even the piped-in music at the Annex before Black Kids did a couple of evenings ago, but they started (and ended) so promptly that I only caught one-sixth of their six-song set. Not sure how well you know New York geography, but suffice it to say it's a long way from 52nd and Broadway to Delancey St. and the Williamsburg goddamn Bridge. Not their fault.

At least the song I caught was "Ocean", the last track from A Place to Bury Strangers' self-titled debut, and a song that lives up to its title in its immersive vastness. "It's love that controls you," the frontman, Death By Audio chief, and ex-Skywave singer Oliver Ackermann intoned, not exactly with perfect pitch and perhaps a bit too high in the mix. Jay Space's drumming seemed as important as the swirling-but-not-deafening maelstrom of guitar effects, toms bashing all over the beat while the bass drum kept a steady, physical undercurrent.

Eventually, it was an extra burst of percussion that announced the guitars were about to get quite a bit louder. And they did, a piercing ring shining out above Ackermann's squealing, gnashing, vomiting mid-level tones. OK, pretty loud, I guess. Oh yeah, the performance was backed by a black-and-white film projection showing men and women running around in circles in what looked like a game of "Ring Around the Rosie" played in the fiery depths of hell.

AAM Promo Day Party [Music Hall of Williamsburg]

Oh No! Oh My!




Mika Miko




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Will Sheff




...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead