Live B-more: Matt & Kim, the Death Set, Naked on the Vague @ Lo-Fi Social Club

March 28, 2008 by Greg  Send to a Friend

All photos: Josh Sisk

NOTE: Thanks to Jeff the Baltimore Taper, you can find a complete recording of the show available free and exclusively on my blog, Aural States.  Just click here.

Thursday nights in Baltimore are usually pretty calm, save for pockets in downtown (the Power Plant *puke*), Fells Point, Federal Hill and Canton. Especially in upper Mt Vernon, by the Charles Theater, there are not usually teeming masses littering the streets. They are more like small, casual social nuclei bouncing about in a happy, zen-like state.

But going into this show, based on the line-up, I knew things would be insane. And my suspicions were proven right. As I approached Lo-Fi, I could see a throng of people clustered on the sidewalk in front of the door and on the curb, beers and cigarettes in plain view and the cops just a few doors down at Club Choices chatting up the bouncers and some young ladies.

This is why I love Baltimore.

I walked in late, missing the Pharmacy. But according the hearsay of a trusted source, they weren’t anything too revolutionary. Next up were Naked on the Vague, an experimental psych duo from Australia with a penchant for mesmerizing, repetitive guitar riffs, driving drums and freaked-out vocals with a heavy helping of minor key dissonance. Not my cup of tea, but they seemed fairly competent. Maybe it was my expectations going into the show (thinking only of Death Set and Matt & Kim) but they just struck me as largely unengaging. They would, however, be the perfect soundtrack to the cinematic interpretation of a bad, sort of mundane, acid trip.

Then things got interesting. From the strains of the opening chaos, I made out “Mother Fucking Death Set” and I, along with every other loiterer and person in the gallery space (even Dan Deacon, the current poster-boy at large for Wham City and the Baltimore indie zeitgeist), proceeded to pack like sardines into the criminally narrow show-space.

It’s on.

The Death Set (bonkers)

Vision hazy. Sweaty, beer drenched bodies. The floor/room smelled of urine and I honestly didn’t care. I was too busy freaking-the-fuck-out. This is the madness and genius of the Death Set. Lead singer/guitarist Johnny Siera owned the stage and the front of the dance floor, hopping to and fro, up and down and onto the sound equipment like some kind of coked-out, hyper-agile primate. The crowd giddily pulsated with a madness that virtually had people frothing. The first notes of each song were welcomed with riotous applause as each song was instantaneously recognized. It seemed almost everyone knew every word, and was determined to help Johnny sing them.

The camaraderie of the crowd was emblematic of the Baltimore scene and reminiscent of the golden age of punk where community and brotherhood reigned supreme over the scene. Despite a great deal of crowd surfing, pushing, shoving and crushing, everyone kept it polite and friendly (a rarity nowadays). Lo-Fi has a great sounding space, one of the best in Baltimore. The Death Set’s treble-friendly synths and vocals shimmered and soared. The set highlight for me was a three-way tie between “Collision”, “Negative Thinking” and a raucous cover of Operation Ivy’s “Bombshell” off their sole release Energy. The show turned out to be the perfect send-off for one of Baltimore’s favored artists as they head off to their UK tour.

Matt & Kim are an impressive duo and definitely took the energy ball from the Death Set and kept i t rolling. Kim’s drumming is top-notch with metronomic precision and ability to ramp up the tempo instantaneously (also I find her adorable). Matt’s simple yet addictive keyboard/synth work kept the crowd bopping and his earnest, slightly atonal kiddie-vocals really made things click. A friend said he thought M&K’s music just had too happy of an edge. But I thought they provided a perfect match to the Death Set’s spastic elation, taking the tone of the show into a more sugary-pop realm that worked great. And really, to make a crowd go nuts over a song that consists mostly of yeahs (”Yea Yeah”), you must be doing something right, eh? Thanks to Josh Sisk for some excellent pics from the night.

Matt & Kim

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