BrightestYoungThings: LiveDC: State Department/ Mussels/ Impossible Arms @ Velvet Lounge

All photos: Jane Briggs
All words: Andrew Bucket

With an all-star band like State Department in the headlining slot, there is often a feeling that whatever happens before they take the stage is an obligatory preamble, but the visiting bands Mussels (Brooklyn) and Impossible Arms (NC) almost wore this crowd out by delivering such furious and inspired performances to open the show.

Impossible Arms, on Odessa Records, are a dramatic and mature songwriting force. I bought the album after this show. Like the best of the indie bands of the 80s and 90s, they are interested both in punk and classic rock; fist pumping and guitar solos together again in a glorious reconciliation.

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Mussels are more mathy and intricate, with startling stop-and-go song structures that are so very familiar of 80s hardcore, but in a broader sense the set of songs is sprawling and diverse. Instrumental breaks and even very loud explosions of noisy feedback made the set dynamic an intriguing throughout-- not mentioning the tightness of the band, as it is clear they have an intimacy and musical understanding of each other that allows them to be flawlessly spontaneous. A surprising group that definitely stands defiantly apart from the regular-old-flavor-of-the-month that Brooklyn exports to us in a timely fashion each week.

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State Department are a super group that is newly formed and has members of heavy hitters Ra Ra Rasputin, Spiritual Machine, and Black and White Jacksons. Patrick Kigongo, is either a wind-talker of guitar technology, or the Haley Joel Osment of indie-pop--he talks to ghosts of Echo and the Bunnymen and Felt with noisy, surfy riffs that glide along the steady, insistent drums parts. Michael Medlock keeps his vocals angry and personal, which is a lot better than sassy and sarcastic. With sparklers ignited, the group even takes it way back to the Velvet Underground's iconic song Waiting for the Man, a number that turned into an orgiastic crowd-participation sort of thing when just about anybody was allowed onstage, and just about anybody was allowed to have a microphone.

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