Bear is Driving, Rafter, Your Freedom Party, "The Dark Side of David Silver," Jan. 29, Danger Danger Gallery

The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.

0 comments

Bear is Driving, Rafter, Your Freedom Party, "The Dark Side of David Silver," Jan. 29, Danger Danger Gallery

POSTED: Friday, January 30, 2009, 9:31 PM

Filed Under: Music | Philly Bands Last Night

Rafter Roberts

myspace.com/rafterroberts

There was an affable looseness to the proceedings last night at Danger Danger Gallery. It seemed to be affecting Rafter, in town from San Diego, who had to stop themselves short midway through an enthusiastically scattershot set: "Did I mention we have CDs? We're professional musicians!"

Frontman Rafter Roberts, a chatty, excitable redhead, was pleased as punch to be playing to the thinned-out 1:30 a.m. crowd, pausing in between bursts of spazzy quirk-pop to extol the virtues of going dancing with your honey and then having sex ("It feels good! And it creates emotional intimacy!"), and to muse on the everyday nature of tragedy (such as losing your cousin to a serial killer — apparently that really happened to him, though it might have been a strange joke). That was how he prefaced the brief, relatively somber song "Tragedy," before informing his drummer: "You don't know this one … just play the Addams Family beat." Then he turned back to the crowd to ask: "Wait, how does the Addams Family song go?" Pros they may be, with a couple of albums out on noted indie Asthmatic Kitty, but that didn't mean they were any less scrappy than the DIY local talent that filled out much of the rest of the bill.

Well, almost: Your Freedom Party, the West Philly duo of Matt Rubin and Joel Blecher, took that looseness to extremes in their short, sweet basement set earlier on. Favoring topicality over polish and tunefulness over intonation, they made their way, sometimes haltingly, through a handful of utterly simple compositions, most of them apparently written the day before the show, on subjects ranging from the future of Middle Eastern economics after the oil supply is depleted to Tony the neighborhood barber. There were some moments of real loveliness amid the unabashed amateurism, especially when Rubin swapped his cutesy Casio plinkings for an acoustic guitar to complement Blecher's cello figures on the more musically developed "25 to Life." More surprising, though, was the simple, affecting a cappella rendition of Depression-era standard "Brother Can You Spare A Dime."

Your Freedom Party

Photo | Ross Hoffman

There was no room for looseness, however, when Bear is Driving took the stage upstairs. The local instrumental outfit celebrated the release of its first CD The Adventures of Bear is Driving with precision triangle hits (timed to the unpredictable stop-start pauses of "All the Truth, None the Answer") played in front of a gilded Barack Obama wall hanging. Erik Osheim, who taps a sick six-string bass centerstage, sheepishly admitted at one point: "I'll probably crawl back into my cynical little hole at some point, but for now ... it's all about togetherness!" As intense and sometimes overwhelming as it was, the music seemed to echo that sentiment. BiD has figured out how to utilize math not just for the mindless indulgence of arcane virtuosity, but also for split-second showmanship, as with Dan Consiglio's polyrhythms that actually groove — there was not a stationary body in the crowd.

Bear is Driving

Photo | Ross Hoffman

The most curious item on the evening's agenda, which formed a sort ofintermission halfway through the festivities, was Eddie Sids' video-music piece "The Dark Side of David Silver," a mash-up of a complete Beverly Hills 90210 episode with an foreboding original score of electronic music and rock noises. To be honest, although the musical augmentations added some degree of enjoyment to the experience, they were hardly a match for the otherworldly strangeness of just seeing the show itself 15 years down the line.

c funk

Posted 2009-01-31 18:15:26

matt and joel are soooooo hott!

Bear Sweat Shirt

Posted 2009-12-18 20:21:35

Thank you for info.

Posted by K. Ross Hoffman @ 9:31 PM Permalink | Post a comment

0 comments

Previous Story: Antony and the Johnsons, Feb. 2, The Keswick Theatre

Next Story: Impulse Power: Larkin Grimm

Comments (0)

Q&A with SHARI SOLANIS: "The goal isn't pornography"
What we're trying to do this weekend
ICE CUBE: In Memoriam: Joe Tartaglia
Coming soon to Philly: Two cockamamie movie promotion schemes
SEXY TIME Q&A: I've never had an orgasm during sex with a man — and I'm 30!
Q&A with Tony Goldwyn: "Life is gray, and relationships are, too"
CONCERT REVIEW: Primus (3D & quadraphonic sound) @ The Tower 10/17
PHILLY LOVE NOTES: An ode to Spruce Street
CONCERT REVIEW & PHOTOS: James Blake @ TLA 5/11
ICEPACK ILLUSTRATED: The Archbishop meets the Geator, the Mayor goes suit shopping, Le Bec Fin fin.

About this blog

Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

Follow Critical Mass editors Patrick Rapa and Emily Guendelsberger on Twitter:

@mission2denmark | @emilygee

Search this blog:

Topics:

Blog archives:

May
April
March

February
January

Past Archives: