When we arrived at the Middle East on Saturday night, Brad Caetano was on stage alone, with borrowed equipment, drumming up a storm over his looped guitar. Throughout AM/PM's opening set, which was later fleshed out with bass and saxophone, Bostonist could hear the usual Downstairs conversations roaring in the back of the room but, up front, the mood was that of a seance, interrupted only by appreciative mid-song applause. We, too, found ourselves rapt, and surprised to find a performer so engaging despite his covered ears and frequently squeezed-shut eyes.
The seance did not end with the arrival of the show's headliners: Silver Mt. Zion arranged themselves in a semicircle, as if they were conducting a ritual directed at the dark space between the performers and not playing for a sweaty, tightly-packed audience. (The Middle East has yet to turn on the air conditioning. If you were there last night, we can probably recognize you by smell now.) Singer and guitarist Efrim Menuck was frequently hidden from our view by other members of the rather large Tra La La Band as well as his own voluminous hair.
The set list largely consisted of material from their recent album 13 Blues For Thirteen Moons, which is more reliant on vocals than their earlier work but is no less oblique. The seven of them repeatedly constructed steep walls of sound and tore them down with epic Goreckiesque buildup and dissonant, Deerhoofian digressions.
Some of Menuck's plaintive fits of extended solo keening ceased to be effectively stirring over the course of 13 Blues' quarter-hour songs; Bostonist preferred Menuck's voice when he harmonized breathily with violinist Jessica Moss or yelled in baleful punkrock fashion, as in a new song titled (if we recall correctly) "I Built Myself A Metal Bird and Fed My Metal Bird the Wings of Other Metal Birds". ("It's about arts and crafts," they added helpfully.)
Between Silver Mt. Zion's apocalyptic epics, the banter between band and crowd was direct and jovial. "Did anyone read the news today?" Menuck asked. A young woman in front of us called out, "Robert Rauschenberg died!" "No, Robert Rauschenberg died last week," said Menuck, who was concerned with the living: "Is Ted Kennedy okay?" To which the other side of the room replied, "He is resting comfortably!" Menuck later accused the simultaneously serious and ironic audience of being The Internet. (Q: "When's Godspeed getting back together?" A: "You were here last time, weren't you?" "I love you too." "I didn't say I loved you.")
Male voices and female voices tooks turns chanting plainly as Bostonist left the Downstairs, winding our way through the spellbound crowd. Dashing down Mass. Ave., we caught a glimpse of the almost-full moon, and our ears still rang with the words "Millions died to to make this sound, millions died to make this sound, millions died to make this sound" as we flung ourselves in the last red line train.
Top: Jessica Moss and her tattoos. Left: Efrim Menuck faces his audience, briefly. Right: Jessica Moss eats her violin.
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