After 10 years off, Polvo has reunited for a series of shows - one in Spain, one in London and a handful in the US, including one in their hometown of Chapel Hill, NC (well, Carrboro - but geographically, it’s a matter of crossing the street). I waited too long to buy one from the Cat’s Cradle myself, and it sold out; but I scored a ticket off CraigsList, and off I went…
First, the opening bands:
Noncanon are a local three-piece who combine the angular, and sometimes discordant, lines of 90’s guitar bands like Slint, and Polvo, with the modern, melodic but sometimes detached, sound of a band like Radiohead. It works really well. I was quite impressed.
Next, Des Ark, a local duo: one woman singing and playing guitar, another playing drums. The former was a ball of crazed energy as she stomped and thrashed around the stage like Angus Young after two coffees too many (except, I think, if I understood her chatter correctly, she was actually quite drunk, and not tweaking on Starbucks’).
The songs were fast and furious, chaotic bursts of energy. Since I was right up front, I wasn’t getting the best mix, so it all sounded like an excellent drummer playing to sheets of discord, to me. Maybe it would’ve worked better if I knew the songs beforehand. In the middle of the set, the singer did a couple of acoustic songs on a little four-string guitar, which I liked (or could at least hear) - she has a great rock voice, lots of growl, though I could only hear it during the acoustic songs. The electric stuff just blew by me like a sandstorm.
And then, Polvo:
I saw their farewell show, way back in 97 or 98, but I didn’t actually know them very well at the time. Since then, I’ve purchased everything they’ve ever released and have played it all to death. So, this reunion show was a treat. A reunion, but not a full reunion: they have a new drummer, Brian Quast. He did a fine job playing those long, complex, multi-part songs.
Since they’re not touring in support of a new record, I knew all the songs they did - except for one, which I think they said was new (maybe a new album in the works?? hope so).
Ash Bowie (guitarist), sang most of the songs, and Dave Brylawski (other guitarist) did a few; the drummer did some backups. The mix up-front wasn’t really good (never is), so it was sometimes hard to hear the vocals clearly - sure could hear that bass though! But, even on records their vocals are often low in the mix, so I never could tell who was singing or what about, so that much is the same live. But it was fun to see who sang which song, at least - once I figured out what song they were playing, anyway; a lot of them were extended or re-worked so the beginnings were often different from the stuff I’ve spent the last ten years memorizing.
The two guitarists set up on opposite sides of the stage, and pretty much stayed there. The bass player roamed around a bit. And the drummer, well, obviously he stayed put. But there didn’t seem to be a lot of interaction between them during the songs - they played their parts and signaled each other at the end of breaks, etc., but for the most part is it was shoegazing. I don’t think there was ever a time when I could’ve taken a picture of all four of them at once - they never came together. I kindof remember that from the show way back in 97, too.
Dave Brylawski’s amp quit in the middle of a song and he had to swap it out for a different one, while the rest of the band tried to work it out - eventually the rest of the faded away and it ended up as a drum solo. But they brought it back together almost seamlessly and finished the song, once the technical issues were over.
The crowd up-front got crazy towards the end, as all the drunk guys stared moshing and spilling beer over everyone else. It was just like 1993 again! Except that I wasn’t moshing - I was was the one being annoyed about being rammed-into and having beer spilled down my legs. Boy, people must’ve hated me, back in the day.
(repost)