CAVE
cause that's really what the night was all about for me, not the shjips.
another "holy shit" show - my ears weren't even finished ringing from the last one!!!
Openers Ghostbox Orchestra were okay but I feel no interest in writing about them write now.
I was hoping Cave would play plenty of stuff from Psychic Psummer in particular, but Cooper started out with just "We're Cave, we're from Chicago, and this is our new record" - and then they immediately launched into all of Threace. DOPE, totally fine by me, it's all sick... They played it slightly out of order - Silver Headband --> Arrow's Myth --> Sweaty Fingers --> Slow Bern --> Shikaakwa. They played for just barely over an hour
Blew my brainz out. The ending section of Sweaty Fingers was insane, seemed to stretch on and on, with the bassist keeping it SO tight - they seriously have to be the best rehearsed band I've seen I think - the way on a dime they would pass the lead perfectly from sax to one guitar to another guitar... - Arrow's Myth 3/4 (12/8?) was sounded crazy cool, the drummer was absolutely rad. Slow Bern is probably my favorite track on Threace so far, and the bassist once again was awesome here with this really cool, super fast, super high pitched arpeggio that I have no idea how he maintained for as long as he did. Cooper Crain was, as I'm sure yall might have guessed, totally killing it - also couldn't heap enough praise on the guy playing flute/sax - so dope. The pat in Arrow's Myth where it snaps into just the descending sax run and nothing else... EPIC! But yeah, his soloing all night long was so killer.
Don't really know what to say but all the songs reached all sorts of diverse destinations but were still super tight and fundamentally monotonous (in the good way), inhabiting some awesome grooves, taking some of the best parts from the material on the record, expanding/reinventing it and adding some new stuff too. Moral of the story: <3 Cave, can't wait to see them again, can't wait for Bitchin Bajas to be here in the spring (according to Cooper afterwards).
Wooden Shjips - so I was going to the show w/ several people from the WHRB - they were all super excited for the shjips and I said to them, just you wait, Cave will blow yr head up and then wooden shjips will just be the come down... they were all thoroughly amazed by Cave and slightly bored by Wooden Shjips. I enjoyed WS though, since I knew that's what would happen. If you already accept that pretty much every Wooden Shjips song is exactly the same, but you also enjoy their formula, then yeah it's fun to mellow out with them playing live. Live, it seems like they just add a longer solo section for Ripley. Who I hear is a dick? Who knows. Visuals were okay, one part had the pupil-sequence from the light trip from 2001 tiled with some other stuff overlaid. If people were moshing/dancing more (it was at a tiny club that seemed like it had good potential for this, but it was a mostly older, bar crowd that didn't seem to be wholly there for the show) it would have been cool since the WS were pretty fast paced and fun, but that's fine. I had a good time, but my following impression of the setlist captures it well:
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
"Wooden Shjips Song"
Actually trying to remember it seems impossible. They sounded exactly how I expected them to sound.
CAVECAVECAVECAVECAVE. Yay.