Image by Erik Adams
Dark Meat blows headliners out of the water in Austin
May 15, 2008, at the Mohawk
By Erik Adams
Published: May 17th, 2008 | 8:00pm
A note to any bands who might be reading this: There’s no following Dark Meat. If you find yourself headlining a bill that features the Athens, Georgia, umptet, kindly offer to swap your performance slots. Dark Meat’s going to blow you out of the water regardless, so you're best off wiped from the audience’s memory rather than sticking in their heads as a letdown.
The latest victim of Dark Meaticide is Cave Singers, who drew the lineup short straw this past Thursday in Austin. Cave Singers are a good band, they're just a little difficult to pay attention to in a room that Dark Meat just filled with glitter, paper streamers, glow sticks, and inflatable dolphin pool toys.
Dark Meat took an opening set at a Thursday-night show and turned it into a happening. The energy was manic, sometimes communal, and sometimes confrontational. The war-painted horn section (a.k.a. the Vomit Lasers) signaled the beginning of the show with a procession through the crowd, which was echoed at set’s end when the tenor sax–playing Laser lumbered away from the stage on the shoulders of his tom-beating cohort.
Sadly, an overloaded and overstimulated PA system made the musical element of the show almost negligible. Running an insane amount of instruments through the tiny speakers of the Mohawk’s inside stage resulted in a muddy din of guitars, keys, violin, and horns. Thankfully, the band’s two drummers cut through all of that, so there was at least some rhythmic guide for shimmying, swaying, and jumping. This much I could tell: There are elements of garage punk, swampy classic rock, and tent-revival soul in Dark Meat. The strange meeting of these styles was visualized by the band’s stage setup, which placed the rockers and rollers on one stage and the the Vomit Lasers on another.
Saddled with poor sound, the band poured on the low-rent (in a good way) spectacle, shellacking the most fervent revelers with glitter and confetti. It will be a long time before this shtick feels as played-out and empty as the Flaming Lips' annual balloons-and-bullhorns road show; one has to pause in the middle of the madness and wonder how enjoyable (and lineup-decimating) this will be the next time Dark Meat is in town. The band hasn't used all its tricks yet, and even if it has, you can at least hope to hear the music.
Issue #35
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more