The ornate Rubin Pavilion at the Brooklyn Museum wasn’t designed to host a bunch of scruffy indie rockers, but that’s exactly what it got for a special Todd-P-curated show on Saturday. A marching band, a group of choreographed flag wavers and an impressive baton twirler all performed in between sets, while museum workers flitted around and nervously eyed the Rodin sculptures roped off near the stage.
The event was billed as an evening of contemporary Brooklyn bands, but the Beets, from Jackson Heights, Queens, were up first. They opened with a blast of the Goffin/King staple “The Loco-motion,” which caused their heavily reverbed sound to echo up into the glass ceiling, rendering singer Juan Wauters mostly inaudible. Thankfully, the sound improved as the set progressed, with Wauters adding wonderfully slurry vocals to their disjointed anthem, “The Devil.” A vaguely motorik groove surfaced during a new song, suggesting they’re ready to move on from their raggedy Jonathan Richman-esque pop, but the biggest surprise of the night was seeing a little kid asking bassist Jose Garcia for his autograph.
San Francisco’s Grass Widow may have been similarly perplexed at being described as a Brooklyn band, but quickly won over the bustling crowd with a short and sweet set of gorgeous three-part vocal harmonies and fractured guitar noise. There’s an endearing slackness at the heart of their sound that is reminiscent of the Raincoats first album, and they often strip the music away altogether to demonstrate those bone-chilling vocals. This wasn’t the perfect venue for Grass Widow—the sound occasionally fell into tinny discordance as it ricocheted around the cavernous foyer—but singer/guitarist Raven Mahon is a star in the making, with her vocal psychosis providing the perfect counterpoint to her more controlled musical inclinations.
Crystal Stilts closed out the show, delivering old and new material in one of their first performances without drummer Frankie Rose. Singer Brad Hargett hasn’t gained much confidence as a frontman despite innumerable bouts of touring, and spends the entire set dancing awkwardly and looking like he’d rather be anywhere else other than here. But their willful amateurism and in-between song jocularity is all part of the appeal, and the new material is mostly a slow turn of the Crystal Stilts wheel, with guitarist JB Townsend occasionally adding a few different sounds but mostly sticking to the template set down on Alight of Night. The tight control exercised over “Prismatic Room” makes it one of the best pieces of contemporary psychedelia from past decade, and sets people’s heads nodding before they shuffle off deep into the bowels of the museum at the close of the set.
Photo by www.flickr.com/photos/alanrules/
