MUSIC BLOG

Tempo No Tempo CD Release Party @ Bottom of the Hill 11/15/07

• Author: None
• Published: Monday, December 10, 2007

TEMPO NO TEMPO
THE DON’TS
THE LOVELY PUBLIC
Bottom of the Hill
Nov. 17th, 2007
   

It’s fascinating how geographical location can have an influence on music. Take the blues for example: Born in the fields and churches of the South, it had a rootsy, down home feel reminiscent of a murky delta bog. When the same music was relocated up the Mississippi to Chicago's bustling industrialism and metropolitan energy, it took on a hard-driving, electrified feel, personified by people like Muddy Waters. Similarly, New York has had a long tradition of music that is as extreme, abrasive, and individualistic as the city continues to be. The same can be said of the sunny (and predominantly artificial) sounds of pop music from Los Angeles mirroring the modern plasticity of Hollywood.

It could be argued that music is a reflection of life in the particular area that it was made. With this in mind, what is the sound of the Bay Area today? For a place so unique in the world, and in such a unique time, what kind of sounds could represent the place we live in?

This is the question I was pondering while I was Tempo No Tempo’s release party for their second EP, Repetition (Double Negative Records).  Filling out the bill were SF bands The Lovely Public and The Don'ts, along with between set DJ action by DJ Pasternak of local favorites Lemonade. The show had been written about and endorsed by many of the Bay Area's indie music publications, including an endorsement from the Deli SF.

Regretfully I caught only the second half of the opening set by The Lovely  Public, but what I heard was more than enough to show that they  were in great form that night. If you haven't had the pleasure of seeing this band live or hearing their excellent album Burning Tape at the Mystery Dinner,  both of these tasks should immediately be placed on your to do list. In this writer's opinion The Lovely Public (TLP) are easily one of the most exciting bands that San Francisco has to offer. What’s special about them is how they put their music together. Sure, they can write great chord progressions and melodies and make interesting sounds, but quality parts don't necessarily guarantee a working machine. It is the way these musical fragments and pieces are ordered and arranged that makes TLP truly fascinating. Songs like "The Panic Son" and "The Math," both of which they played at the show, constantly morph into something other than what you think.

With a lot of bands, once they stumble upon a decent hook they use it to death, beating you over the head with the fact of its catchiness. It is frequent for the "good part" or the "hook" in a TLP song to occur only once because once is all that is necessary.  Though they approach hooks from a totally different angle, their songs still emphasize and glorify them in a similar way to the most classic of pop music.

Any show that opens with The Lovely Public has its work cut out for it, and the acts did that followed this evening did not disappoint. The Don'ts were next on the bill. This was my first time seeing The Don'ts and on the whole I found them very intriguing and enjoyable. Texturally, they brought to mind the sounds of Kraut bands from the 70's:  spacey guitar atmospherics, skeletal bass playing, drums driving with machine like efficiency, and manic vocals bouncing off of everything. Yet, where Kraut can tend to be sprawling and impressionistically amorphous, The Don'ts are focused; their short, punchy song are tight beams of energy. The bass player particularly stood out for me, with a very punchy bass style that really gave the songs kick. Dancing on his dynamic wah with the elegance of a concert pianist, his usage of effects pedals was exceptional.

In between the sets, DJ Pasternak kept the energy up with an excellent set that included lots of great rhythms and dark, funky textures. A personal highlight of the mix was when he threw in his recent remix of Tempo No Tempo's "Irregular Heartbeats," which came blasting out of the Bottom of the Hill's great sound system in all it's dubby, doomy glory.

The energy was up and the sets had been totally solid up to that point. It was time for Tempo No Tempo to seal the deal.  They took the stage and kicked its ass. It only took a couple songs before the near capacity show was in the palm of their hand. If I could use one word to describe Tempo No Tempo, it would be "clean."  Their songs aren't thrown together, they're crafted. They don't just hammer out bar chords, each part is woven together. Every song is slick and economical. Yes, they play dance music, but Tempo No Tempo is not just your average white boys in tight pants copping Gang of Four riffs. It may not be blatant at first listen, but there's real tasty polyrhythms going on underneath those catchy melodies. They manage to keep their songs shifting and changing without dropping the groove or giving the asses a second to stop wiggling.

The energy that had been building throughout the whole night reached fever pitch when Tempo closed with their infamous cover of Peaches' "Fuck The Pain Away."  Before anyone could say "Kindergarden Teacher," the Bottom of the Hill's stage was full of people bumping and grinding along with the band. Lead guitarist Tyler MacCaulley exhibited some ace crowd control; he was actually able to get the rest of the crowd to silently crouch to the ground in anticipation of the song's climax.  When they finally dropped the bomb at the song's end, the Bottom of the Hill was reduced to a belligerent maelstrom of craziness.

Going back to what I was asking at the beginning of this article, what is the Bay Area's sound? What is the music that best represents this place? I'm not gonna go ahead and say that the music I saw at Bottom of the Hill was the perfect embodiment. I don't know if the show represented a scene or some kind of ground swell of creative activity in the Bay Area. Yet I do feel that pondering such things provides a very interesting context in which to experience a local music show.

The music at Tempo No Tempo's CD release party was very high quality and certainly high energy (I mean, these guys had half the crowd dancing on stage with them, I honestly can't touch them with a 50 foot pole!) but it wasn't transcendent like I know great music can be.  As awesome as the music was that night it still felt like it was restricted to a certain degree, adhering a little too closely to the sound and style of common touchstones in the indie music world.  I don't want to sound like I'm condemning these bands; on the contrary I felt like there was strong evidence that these groups could develop into something beyond what they are now. Each band had their own unique way of tweaking the various styles they had drawn from, which was what I found the most interesting aspect of each set that night. The Lovely Public took classic psycadelia, chopped it up and pieced it together in strange combinations. The Dont's took the sprawl of kraut rock, injected it with a healthy dose of manic humor, and reigned in its expansive sprall. The kind of dance music that Tempo No Tempo played wasn't just for the booty, it worked at your brain too. If these bands keep exploring the unique nature of their experimentations and leave behind the aspects of their sounds that too closely resemble the work of others, the results could truly be something for the Bay Area to be proud of.

[AJ McKinley]

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[STREAM] Tempo No Tempo: Various Tracks