Pitchfork

Text by Matt LeMay, photos by William Kirk. Above: Nick Cave

Last night, music fans young ("Indie rock? I love that!") and old ("Hey, cheap Nick Cave show!") packed New York City's Terminal 5 for the third annual Plug Awards ceremony. As an indie rock awards show with extensive corporate backing, the event was predictably awkward and weird; a cordoned-off counter set aside for "bloggers" bordered on self-parody, and the inescapable presence of the event's numerous sponsors made the awards' name seem oddly apt.

The presentation of the actual awards was almost hilariously anti-climactic-- big wins by the Arcade Fire (Album of the Year, Live Act of the Year) and Radiohead (Artist of the Year) were met with what could only be described as deafening "meh"s, and only a handful of winners were actually on hand to give brief and inadequately amplified acceptance speeches.

But host Patton Oswalt was gracious and good-natured throughout, tacitly acknowledging the hurried weirdness of the night but never appearing frustrated or bitter. Intermittent mixtape-themed videos provided by Michael Showalter may very well have been funny, but it was almost impossible to hear them over the crowd. Indeed, sound problems plagued the night; the volume of the show often fell just below the not-so-ambient noise of the crowd, with the exception of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' excellent, if too-loud, performance.

White Denim's set started the night on an appropriately haphazard note-- noise emanated from behind the curtain while Oswalt was still trying to make a handful of announcements. As the curtain rose, the band's drummer was flanked by a small group of clapping and shouting cronies; they plowed through two quick songs to a crowd that already seemed antsy fifteen minutes into the night. It wasn't clear whether their parting statement of "thanks for the exposure" was a tongue-in-cheek fuck you to a generally unresponsive and chatty audience, or an attempt at genuine gratitude somehow lost to the night's strange mood.

St. Vincent offered one of the more memorable sets of the night, performing three songs with remarkable confidence and charisma. I hadn't seen Annie Clark since back when she performed under her given name, and I was amazed at how well her music and stage presence worked at a venue as large as Terminal 5. Clark and her band worked seamlessly and forcefully in unison, mirroring the ebbs and flows of her music and keeping between-song delays to a minimum. She was rewarded with a win in the Female Artist of the Year category.

The Forms, who followed St. Vincent, did not fare so well, unfortunately. A short set at a large club with bad sound was definitely not the right environment for them, and cast their songs as generic rock band satire. (Their generic "The ____s" name and status as relative unknowns didn't seem to win them many points with the crowd, either).

Dizzee Rascal suffered almost the opposite problem. While the Forms dutifully performed their songs without engaging the audience, Dizzee's attempts to get the crowd enthused largely fell flat. Even a rousing rendition of "Fix Up, Look Sharp" was met mostly with blank stares and chatter.

José González played a lovely and very short set, but amidst the noisy crowd it was difficult to focus on his performance. By the latter part of the night, the rushed feel of the ceremony itself was beginning to get to everybody; I would be hard pressed to think of a worse environment for taking in González's subtle, attention-rewarding songs.

Ultimately, the night belonged to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, whose 50-minute, nine song set quickly laid waste to the stifled strangeness that had preceded it. It wasn't until Cave took the stage that the odd demographics of the awards show began to make sense. The second Cave appeared on stage, the bald spots dotting the crowd began bobbing up and down excitedly. Even Cave seemed to have just a bit of trouble settling into the night, but by his third song it was clear that we were in the presence of a master. In fact, the formal dress and unerring professionalism of Cave and his band put to shame the night's half-assed hipster approximation of awards show flair.

As the crowd shuffled out of Terminal 5, Cave's performance was clearly the favored topic of conversation, even among relative newcomers to Cave's work (myself, admittedly, included). Sure, the "indie rock trade show" atmosphere of the night was bizarre and a little upsetting, but if that's what it takes to put on a $10 Nick Cave show, maybe it isn't so bad after all.

P.S. Thanks a lot to everybody who voted for Pitchfork for the Music Website of the Year Plug Award. We're very happy to have won for the third year in a row!

More photos below, including a few from Bat for Lashes' pre-party set.

NICK CAVE AND THE BAD SEEDS




BAT FOR LASHES






WHITE DENIM




ST. VINCENT




THE FORMS


DIZZEE RASCAL




JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ


PATTON OSWALT