the submersible dirigible

Alone on the stage, Grouper’s expression was noticeably rigid, an austere demeanor emphasized further by a stiff posture.  Harris’s composure was set in especially stark relief by the lounging crowd, all scattered across the New Museum Theater floor, most sitting, some lying comfortably on their backs staring up at the high ceiling.  Like a group of grammar-school students circling the school librarian for afternoon reading hour — only favorite pillows and colored child-size carpet-squares absent from the picture — the audience was comfortable, but completely consumed by the performance onstage.

Grouper and High Places each played an equal share of the show’s two hours, but Grouper’s long-form style made best use of that brief hour; each of Liz Harris’s individual song blended seamlessly into the next, a wealth of drones, field recordings and electronics made the transition, all layered carefully onto cassettes, and reconstructed live as wailing, spacious atmospheric pieces.  When the songwriting sharpened into focus, vocals and guitar melodies draped in familiar waves of distortion and foggy tape atmospherics, Harris returned to her statuesque state of concentration.  Fiddling between songs with the mixer and tape recordings, her composure eased, and the music itself even seemed to stretch its legs, to avoid becoming too tightly wound.  Abstract visuals, ranging from a chilly black and white kaleidoscope to dark, to low exposure nighttime campfire recordings occupied the sizable movie-screen behind New Museum Theater stage.  These simple images nicely complemented Grouper’s cold, atmospherics, never robbing much  attention from the music.  

Grouper has made a handful of appearances in New York City over recent months.  My recount of the night’s events give the impression Grouper sounded or looked uptight, but to the contrary, her performance was confident, and sounded spot on.

High Places own hipster pop-tropicana was undoubtedly more suited to that weekend’s unseasonably warm weather, a welcome musical pairing with the unexpected mid-February siesta.  The duo’s stage presence and live sound was engaging.  The crowd stood for the duo’s performance, crowding tightly up to the knee-high stage for their performance.  While High Places seemed more suited to the New Museum’s Get Weird lineup, their boistrous sound was a poor fit for the basement theatre space.  New Museum’s theatre space is hardly an optimal space for a typical concert, it’s bland open spaces and rear seating area more suited ambient, or queit listening, rather than the lively, romping sort of tunes Robert Barber and Mary Pearson play.  

Despite the venue’s sterility, the pair put on an impressive performance.  Their 2008 proper release never struck me as especially memorable, but the live performance made clear just what everyone’s been raving about all this time.  Barber stayed focused on his drum machine, thwacking away at the programmed steel drum and twiddling with mixer knobs, while Mary Pearson harmonized over the beats and a played along variety off odd noisemakers.

With the recent retreat of Tribeca’s Knitting Factory to Brooklyn, and the 2007 demise of the Lower East Side’s experimental music landmark Tonic, there are precious few modest sized retreats left in Manhattan for the likes of Grouper and High Places.  Aside from John Zorn’s The Stone, multi-purpose spaces like the New Museum’s basement theater provide a splendid opportunity for experimental music to flourish outside of Brooklyn.  Critically acclaimed musicians attract a nice mix of NYU undergrads, hipsters and enthusiasts, but are probably unsuited for Bowery Ballroom and Webster Hall sized venues for the time being.  

The Get Weird series has been up and running for around a year now, and constantly booking an impressive variety of artists and styles.  I’d say the Get Weird concert space would be better suited to the likes of Alva Noto and Grouper than High Places and Akron/Family, but it’s hard to be too dissapointed when a high quality venue keeps attracting such an interesting lineup of artsits.