Robo-jammin'
White Williams recreates "Smoke" onstage in Austin
By Erik Adams
Published: February 2nd, 2008 | 5:50pm
January 31, 2008, in Austin — As bassist Tyler Drosdeck laid into the motorik of White Williams’ “New Violence,” I could feel myself begin to panic. It had nothing to do with the song, one of the catchiest and certainly the bounciest on Smoke (Tigerbeat6), the excellent debut LP from this synth-pop three-piece helmed by Cleveland wunderkind Joe Williams. No, the mechanisms that squeeze the sweetest anxiety juice from my mind grapes were spurred into motion by this thought: Are there certain songs that are neither improved nor diminished by live performance?
Thus was the conundrum whose permutations shaded the entire show, held inside at Emo’s on a sleepy Thursday, when most of Austin seemed to be concerned with the Velvet Revolver show going on a few blocks north at Stubb’s (not that Guns 'N Stone Temple Roses siphoned many fans away from Emo’s). The band offered glammed-up robo-jams ripped straight from the copies of Smoke lying on the merch table. Opener Rings brought the opposite: Loose, organic, and gleefully unpolished, it was difficult to imagine their songs living a life beyond the stage. Locals Cry Blood Apache landed somewhere in between, its freeform feedback squalls contained only by the oppression of a cheap drum machine.
Williams, Drosdeck, and guitarist Hayes Shanesy seem to get on much better with their beat-making devices, which explains why they seemed rather comfortable within the confines of their material (either that or, well, you know, they titled the record Smoke). Decked out in a baggy T-shirt and shrink-wrapped jeans, Williams ambled between center stage and a bank of synthesizers, keyboards, and sequencers that looked much too heavy for the flimsy stand keeping them aloft. As far as the comparisons lavished upon him go, Williams was much more Brian Eno than Beck or Kevin Barnes, his default performance mode being half-switched-off (again, not insinuating anything here, but they did name their record Smoke), with the occasional juke accompanying his more groove-oriented songs.
With little space for alterations, the band seemed bent on selling themselves on sheer volume. This worked well in the brick box that is Emo’s, where there’s nothing to dampen sound but bodies and the shitty, shitty art on the walls. With volume boosted, Shanesy took what liberties he could within Williams’ minimal arrangements, flexing some crunchy T.Rex muscle and pushing into minor psychedelia via surf-inspired solos.
But loudness and solos aside, I got nothing out of the live White Williams experience that I couldn't have gotten from a night at home with Smoke. Williams’ songwriting chops were on display, and the band deserves credit for its ability recreate the record onstage, but that’s it. I saw White Williams live. Cool.
Rings arrived in Austin at the end of a four-day road trip, and the band’s enthusiasm to not be in an automobile showed through shared, sideways smiles and the vigor with which drummer-vocalist Abby Portner attacked her kit. Sounding like the band that Yoko Ono and and Moe Tucker never started, Rings provided a spontaneity and humanity absent from the night’s headliner. Employing the original method of looping — the vocal round — Rings inspired an anti-“New Violence” quandary: When music flows so freely, is it a disservice to fix it in recorded stasis?
Slathering thick layers of scuzz over a distant relative of Big Black’s “Roland the Drum Machine,” Cry Blood Apache provided spontaneity and tightness in equal measure. The machine was relentless, but the three members of the band never gave up, particularly guitarist Hans Hinrich, who played in the middle of the crowd, thrashing about bodily and musically, providing the answer to questions that wouldn’t be raised for another hour-and-a-half: Live music ought to be, you know, alive.
Issue #35
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