{"id":2480,"date":"2008-05-11T19:17:15","date_gmt":"2008-05-11T23:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=2480"},"modified":"2008-05-11T19:17:15","modified_gmt":"2008-05-11T23:17:15","slug":"polvo-reunion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=2480","title":{"rendered":"Polvo Reunion"},"content":{"rendered":"

After 10 years off, Polvo has reunited for a series of shows - one in Spain, one in London and a handful in the US<\/a>, 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...<\/p>\n

First, the opening bands:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Canon SD630<\/div>\n

Noncanon<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Next, Des Ark<\/a>, 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').
\n<\/p>\n

Canon SD630<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Canon SD630<\/div>\n

And then, Polvo:
\n<\/p>\n

Canon SD630
\nSteve & Brian & Dave<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Canon SD630
\nAsh & Steve<\/div>\n

Since they're not touring in support of a new record, I knew all the songs they did - except for one, which I think<\/i> they said was new (maybe a new album in the works?? hope so). <\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Canon SD630
\nAsh & Steve<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Canon SD630
\nDave<\/div>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> was was the one being annoyed about being rammed-into and having beer spilled down my legs. Boy, people must've hated<\/em> me, back in the day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}