...was easily one of the best shows i've seen this year. that only 100 or so people witnessed this speaks volumes about this town. michael gira has been one of the best songwriters around since the early '80s and continues to make intriguing, moving music, besides releasing records by phenomenal bands like akron/family and devendra banhart and larsen and calla.
i walked in as akron/family just started, and i haven't been that blown away by a band i'd never heard in quite some time (probably since i saw mouthus in new york in march). we're talking epic rootsy folk/psych-rock in the vein of smog and palace here. they sounded like what wilco would sound like if they dropped the pretention and ran with their emotion (don't get me wrong, i love wilco and their pretentiousness, but some of their songs don't come so naturally). maybe throw a little elephant 6 style in there with the tweaker hippie vibe. i like these guys more than devendra. i got the album and can't wait to hear it.
akron/family backed gira for 80 minutes of intense crooning and heavy hypnotic jams. they were pushing gira into some can/amon duul/ghost-like trance territory, with lots of animal collective-esque yelping and hollering, a real deadly psychedelic hoedown. the encore was a beautifully bedraggled cover of dylan's "i pity the poor immigrant" and "blind" from gira's solo album "drainland."
gira's one of the few songwriters who has consistently improved and evolved over twenty-plus years. he's in the same league as neil young, nick cave, tom waits, and richard thompson.
