It’s always weird reviewing a band when a couple of friends happen to be in the band. The review becomes that much more impossible, truly impossible actually, when the band asks you to come up and sit in on a few songs. So was the case on Friday when I went out to see Tiger Saw, Grey Milk, and Hagab the Grasshopper at the Java Hut. You can’t rightly review the band you are playing with. Also Hagab pulled out of the gig so here I am going in to review three specific bands and I come out only reviewing two and one of them isn’t even the one I was supposed to be reviewing in the first place.

In place of HTG was the very quiet and demure Raianne Richards. Raianne is in another group I saw a couple of months ago, The Accident That Led Me To This World, and I would much prefer to see her do her own stuff in a setting like the church I saw The Accident in. The Java Hut was very chatty this evening and Raianne’s soft sounds were no match for the throng of hopped up coffee heads waiting in line for their next fix. I know from prior experiences that she has a very sweet voice though and like I said, I’d love to see her in a more respectful environment.

GREY MILK 

Saturday night I trekked it out to Northampton to take in Do Make Say Think at Pearl St. Do Make Say Think is an instrumental outfit from Toronto that specialize in the bombast. Kind of like if And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and Arcade Fire got together and had a strict no singing rule. I downloaded a couple songs a few months ago and I was hooked. Opening the show was French experimentalists The Berg Sans Nipple.

THE BERG SANS NIPPLE

When I walked into the room I was immediately struck with how many instruments were on stage. The entire stage was covered. I mean there wasn’t even enough room to walk. Of course, due to the racket that I knew DMST could make I assumed this was all of their equipment. Let me explain something about these Sans Nipple boys. There are only two of them. They achieve the sound that they do by having everything from live drums (one set for each of them) keyboards, guitars, toy instruments, steel drums and whatever the hell else you can wrap your head around up on stage with them all individually miked and run through a mixing board. Each of them of course has their own mixing board. These mixing boards in turn are run through a giant set of effects pedals that make Roger Lavallee look like a needy orphan. They sample and bend and twist all these sounds to their satisfaction and what comes out is some of the most beautiful, surprisingly accessible, groove based music I have heard in a while. I tell you the heads did not stop bobbing for 45 minutes straight. I purchased this CD not 30 seconds after the last note was hit.Do Make Say Think then took the stage. All 8 of them. Two drummers, two guitars, a bass player, a violinist, a trumpet player and a sax player. One of the guitar players and the sax player each had their own keyboard. I hate to be repetitive but these Canucks proceeded to make some of the loudest, noisiest sounds of beauty this writer has ever heard. Just transcendent. At times there would be four horns going at the same time. Sometimes two basses. Sometimes three guitars. Some times as heavy as the heaviest metal you can imagine. Sometimes soft as a folkie in the park. At all times beautiful. At all times building towards an undeniable climax. If not for the one song that did have vocals, which truly was the “Money” or “Electioneering” of this show, this would have been one of my all time great shows of all time. I can’t recommend this band enough. There were 3 or 4 college kids in the crowd who appeared to have indulged a bit in the hallucinogens before the show. While the bands was off stage before their encore the kids starting dancing around in a circle making a Stomp type racket with their hands and their feet. When the band came out for the encore a few members joined them which was great. I believe they are playing the Middle East downstairs tonight. If you are anywhere near Boston you should go, you’ll thank me later.

Cheers Volcano Boy!