Long Live the Landlord

I saw Do Say Make Think at Mississippi Studios last night. Wow. I'm not really familiar with them, started listening to their stuff last week when I saw that they were playing this show. I had pegged their sound as settlers migrating over desolate plains music. Not quite as apocalyptic or exciting as Godspeed You! Black Emperor (a favorite of mine).

But I kind of take it back. Here are some things I jotted in the dark in response to their songs, they are my quick impressions and some of them are observations and some are my cinematic imaginings. It was the best show I've seen in awhile.

(a) Animated eagle clan's epic battle with sky warriors ending with a thunder flying battle.

(b) A wasteland filled with swamp and dying trees and the heavy sky and dead rabbits litter the meadow, poisoned, and the fish lay gasping in the ponds.

(c) and then it's long slow plodding plains with the mountains so far away they never move and the dust in your mouth and jackrabbits and low scrubby fires that can't drown out the vicious vast sky.

(d) I just noticed there are two drummers! Two guitarists, a bassist, a violinist, alto sax, two trumpets. Sampler and keyboard. The sound is just right, I'm swallowing but not chewing.

(e)An imploding city with live animal markets and people in love and dusty streets and pigeons flying up and children sucking on nitrous balloons in alleyways trying not to be the people their parents told them to be.

(f) The dying throes of a superficial futuristic lifestyle. Vitamins and motorized walkways and filtered air and gelatin supplements. Our hero escapes and runs through the last forest and licks sap off trees and rolls in the dirt and freezes in the river and bleeds on rocks and falls asleep in the sun on a hillside.

(g) The guitarist/keyboardist just went for some flair on the keyboard and knocked it off the stand. He is the most animated of all the musicians and it's a bit unnecessary. Incongruent in fact.

(h) Swimming in a river and sun on rocks and a long slow departure from the place and person that you were. But it's nice, the way the sun is on the stone and it's like sitting under a porch when it's raining or walking through fresh snow or tall grass.