White Rabbits, Jan. 23, Johnny Brenda's

POSTED: Thursday, January 24, 2008, 6:58 PM

Filed Under: Music | Show Last Night

John Vettese

He's not impressed.

Holy shit, so I was pretty blown away by this show last night, but I'm gonna remain calm and be a cynical bastard about it. Here's why: gimmickry, the possibility thereof and the potential for backfire.

White Rabbits were loud, tight, rocked an incredible rhythm. They damn well better have, since the six-piece had two to three percussionists onstage at any given time. Dual drum kits rolled courtesy of Matthew Clark and Jamie Levinson, while a third guy - Adam Russell - milled near the back, playing bass sometimes, using a floor tom / tambourine / hand percussion others. Once or twice, one of the two kit drummers hopped to some other auxiliary instrument. But when all three percussionists were going at once, holy good God you just had to freaking MOVE and lose it.

Polyrhythmic instrumentation is by no means anything new, but White Rabbits uses it in this way that I'd say, really, it's their hitch, their defining point, the unique angle they bring to this indie rock thing. Aside from "The Plot," their songs aren't particularly hooky, but are nonetheless awesome in the full, roaring, intense sound they get with dual guitars, keyboards and yeah, the reverberating, multiform beats.

John Vettese

And there's the rub.

So often I've seen an emergent band with a great in-concert gimmick on their first record, that gets watered down or removed altogether for subsequent records.

Remember when Nick Stumpf fronted The French Kicks from behind the drums? The group opted to slide his kit to the forefront in a stage setup you never see - not even from Max Weinberg. Those shows were solid. Sounded great. But did you catch any of the later gigs where the band brought in a new drummer so Stumpf could stand up and front the band as just a singer? Boy, how much did they suck? I don't think the FKs have put out a bad album yet - 2006's Two Thousand was excellent and underapprecited - but I've got no desire to see them live again. No performance of their newer songs, good as they might be, could possibly be as impressive as French Kicks Mark 1.

Or how about The Shins? When they were touring as an opening act circa Oh, Inverted World, part of their charm was seeing Martin Crandall play those dreamy synth lines on a freaking bright red toy synthesizer his parents might've bought him when he was 12. Now let's look at last year's Wincing The Night Away tour, a sellout show at the Electric Factory. Crandall is making the playing the same dreamy synth lines, but he's standing behind two multi-thouand dollar, sterile, lifeless Korgs. Christ, dude, way to suck all the joy out of your live show.

Not that White Rabbits will - or are really capable of - these sorts of ill-devised personell / equipment choices. Like I said, heavy rhythm from multiple percussionists is kind of a defining aspect of their sound. In order to backfire like I described, their next album would have to be a huge, massive freaking departure into banalaty-land.

At the same time, I wonder how long they'll be able to make their hook last. Will they be able to be as intense as they were last night at Johnny Brenda's, two or three albums down the road? Or will the layers of percussion wind up being no more than an early gimmick that's jettisoned as the band progresses along its career and finds itself unable to resist the lure to streamline their sound into something more managable, something more conventional? I sure hope not, since I insanely dug what I saw. But only time will tell - and I'm not getting too excited just yet.

John Vettese

John Vettese

John Vettese

John Vettese

Jeff

Posted 2008-01-31 11:46:18

Man, I can't believe I learned of this show too late and it was sold out before I could score a ticket.  "Fort Nightly" is a terrific and fresh sounded record.  Hopefully they'll be back in town soon.

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