Live DC: Apes / HEALTH / True Womanhood @ Velvet Lounge

April 7, 2008 by Aaron  Send to a Friend

All photos: Melanie Hoff

After a beautiful week of sunshine and leisure living in El Lay, California, I returned to my digs here in the Colombian District. It kind of makes me sick to write it, but 70 degree weather everyday and $1.50 beer happy hours every night amidst adventures in silverlakes and echoing parks make me feel more than a little home-sick. So I was counting on the hometown boys from HEALTH to welcome me back to this town of freezing rain.

How does one kick off an inevitably epic weekend? Leave work early and take a solid 1.5 hour power nap. This may seem like common sense, but it yields incredible results. What else maintains that powerfully refreshed feeling through the night you wonder? Terriyaki platter at Dan the Man’s Terriyaki and Subs on 9th an U. So necessary. Ahh yes, and maybe a Sierra Nevada at the Velvet Lounge. Something about those regal looking crests in the backdrop of that cool, rejuvenating-seeming river which splits those stately pines on the beer label really takes me back to nature. But damnit if those Sierras don’t remind me of that hike up Mt. Whitney a few summers back. The California nostalgia is threatening to return with a vengeance, and it’s only 9pm.

And whaddaya know? HEALTH drummer/major dude B.J. and his bro Josh had a seat at the bar next to fellow ex-Calian Wakeman and I, and as we shared a few Nevadas together, I learned that B.J.’s father lived not four blocks from the home I grew up in Pasadena, CA. Get the fuck out of town!

Too much for me, so I decided to engulf myself in the music awaiting upstairs.

True Womanhood. If that isn’t a band name… I don’t know… what is? These feminine-minded fellas were just finishing up their sound-check when I found myself in V. Lounge’s listening space, a loft-like cubbyhole where “sold-out” probably means 50 peeps at most. Intimate is an understatement. But hey, I was psyched about the idea of intimacy with the lineup of sure-to-be sonic warriors lined up for the evening, so I embraced the elbow-to-elbow dynamic of the packed house.

The non-woman lead singer/guitarist of Womanhood started of the set with a song dedicated to Klaus Dinger (R.I.P.), which I thought was a classy move. Dinger has long been an inspiration to several of us who embrace his percussive-minimalism and penchant for cathartic grooves. The referential nods to Neu! and fellow Krautrockers have become particularly pervasive in music these days, and I for one think that’s swell.

Yet, the cult of Womanhood seemed to pull their inspiration from the minimal aesthetic found in the followers of the kraut movement, rather than the perpetual motorik rhythm-driven works of Klaus and Co.

A friend said they had a Radiohead-ish sound, and sure, the singer had a definite thing for Thom Yorke’s emotive borderline falsetto and melancholic chord-progressions. But for now, these are surely still aspirations aimed in the right places. The semi-dissonant rhythm guitar-work was so indebted to Sonic Youth pioneered territory, I had a hard time not hearing what felt like a cover band doing their favorite Daydream Nation tunes. But maybe I was just rather ripped.

HEALTH. These dudes are fucking entrancing. After seeing them @ Ottobar [link to that review?] on Easter, I talked to B.J. about what was now their 50th day touring [link to the interview?] and how impressed I was with the amount of energy they brought to the stage. I wish I could provide descriptive justice in the account owed to this band, but there may be no better fitting words than B.J.’s t-shirt which read: “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”

Assaulting. Otherworldly. Caustic. Engulfing. Submerging rapturous catharsis. I felt like I met my other self on an underwater island governed by tribal robots after swimming/drowning in the darkest electro-waves known to man or machine. And once there, the tribe has a huge dance party but no one has the pleasing bio-physiological reaction to the circle of fifths so they break-dance to syncopated dissonance. Sick. HEALTH employs a drumming behemoth, bass, guitar, and effects pedals/pad to fashion a highly rhythmic atmospheric assault on the senses. You are immediately drawn in by the pulsing convulsion of waveforms flowing about you, but you can’t escape the aura created by the flailing passionate force these guys inflict upon their instruments of symmetric mayhem. Please see them soon, whether or not you want to be made mush. They wail.

Talk about a tough act to follow. Next: Apes.

I saw Apes a few weeks back, at their record-release party @ the Cat, but I was surprised to find that the Velvet Lounge provided a better forum for their aggro-dynamic distorted nu-garage psychadelia then I had seen before. Their sound is surely too “big” for the Lounge, but the intimacy allows them to channel their efforts into effectively blowing the minds of the few, rather than a casual-listening conversing audience. Following what seems to be their keyboardist’s trademark creepily masked warped-voice introduction, the band exploded on the stage with sure to be “devil-music” anthems for the new millennium.

The Apes’ wry and humorous take on dark and raucous blasts of sounds reminds me of Arthur Lee singing a cover of “96 Tears” with the White Stripes backing him. And everyone’s having acid-flashbacks. The set was so intense the drummer had taken off his sweater vest by the third song, the lead-singer was singing/hopping with the crowd and I found myself thinking, “Shit. DC ain’t too bad after all.” Although, Disco City @ RnR Hotel with Señor Burns and U.S. Royalty’s DJ set @ Jimmy V’s post-show didn’t hurt the District’s cause.

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