MPMF.17 // SaturDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 Fifth Street/Skyline Stage 9:15 p.m. The New Pornographers (Vancouver, Canada) Indie Rock/Pop
0 6 / / M I D P O I N T M U S I C F E S T I VA L 2 017 / / M P M F.C O M
In 2000, The New Pornographers’ debut album, Mass Romantic (later declared one of the best Indie Rock albums ever made), yielded the deliriously compelling “Letter to an Occupant” and heralded the beginning of an unbroken 17-year string of recorded excellence. From the hair-raising Roy-Woodmeets-Ray-Davies thump of Twin Cinema and the darkly bracing Challengers to the exquisite New Wave/Synth Pop reinvention/ revisitation of Brill Bruisers and brilliantly transitional Electric Version and Together, the pure-Pop-for-all-people collective has managed to push all the right buttons and amass one of the most consistently satisfying music catalogs in Rock history. The band’s latest, Whiteout Conditions, is a logical extension of Brill Bruisers, with even more electronic texture and pulsations underpinning the New Pornographers’ adrenalized Canadian Invasion Pop/Rock in a hybrid frontman A.C. Newman once described as “Krautrock Fifth Dimension.” You’ll Dig It If You Dig: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame condensed into a single wing. And Krautrock Fifth Dimension. (Brian Baker) 8 p.m. Filthy Friends (Seattle; Portland, Ore.) Pop Rock
What do you get when you combine members of Sleater-Kinney, The Fastbacks,
Young Fresh Fellows, King Crimson and R.E.M.? Filthy Friends answered that question for the masses this year and it’s as entertainingly varied as you’d expect. Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker provides the sublime lead vocals, giving the band’s first full-length effort — the recent Kill Rock Stars release, Invitation — its sense of cohesion, while Peter Buck’s guitar playing remains as identifiable as any other player of the past 40 years outside of The Edge, giving the LP’s tracks a welcoming sense of familiarity. Overall, Invitation is simply a fun jam session of a Rock & Roll album, though incredibly well written and constructed (the precise backing vocals drive home the point that this is not a toss-off — these people are f’ing pros!). Moving from vintage Power Pop and early CBGB’s Art Punk to swaggering Glam Rock and Nuggets-ready Garage Pop, Invitation actually sounds like the musicians are having a great time in the studio making it, which is especially infectious coming from a band of musicians with such an extensive collective history in the biz. YDIIYD: Patti Smith, Sleater-Kinney, R.E.M., the history of melodic Rock & Roll. (Mike Breen) 7 p.m. Preoccupations (Alberta, Canada) Post Punk
The sense of unease in Preoccupations’ shadowy Post Punk is like a scar. After the band Women ended suddenly following an onstage fight (the group’s guitarist died after the split as well), some of the members formed Viet Cong, eventually signing with taste-making indie imprint Jagjaguwar and launching a self-titled album into a seemingly welcoming Indie Rock scene in 2015. When the band started work on a follow-up, the earth was shifting under the members’ feet — longtime relationships ended in the wake of touring behind the debut, every musician had moved to a different city and, after announcing it would change its name from Viet Cong in the wake of mounting protests, the group hadn’t yet settled on the moniker it would use. The disjointed musicians came together in the studio with
a blank slate and used the swirling turmoil to their advantage, injecting it into the dark, absorbing 2016 album Preoccupations, which was also the new band name. YDIIYD: Swans, Interpol, Echo & the Bunnymen, Wire. (MB) 6 p.m. Welles (Nashville, Tenn.) Psych Pop
drummer Lon Leary, and the duo’s experimental approach to writing and recording typically involves an Impossible Missions Force of talented collaborators and the concept that the group’s sound will be determined in the moment of live or studio creation. That said, Swarming Branch’s recently released new album, Surreal Number, represents Graham’s most linear musical execution to date while maintaining an adventurous sense of artistic whimsy, all contained within the concept that synthetic and organic systems can successfully work in tandem. Even with a loose set of applied rules, Surreal Number proves that Swarming Branch is still a freewheeling example of originality within a familiar musical framework. YDIIYD: Dan Bejar’s Destroyer making 8-bit Folk Rock with Beck. (BB)
Jeh Sea Wells’ grandfather gave him a cassette copy of Sgt. Pepper when he was in second grade, and it became a listening obsession for the Arkansas native. The irony in this situation is that the Fab Four’s masterpiece is over twice as old as Wells, yet he effortlessly channels the spirits of The Beatles in their experimental phase (even drifting into “White Album” territory), as well as Nirvana at its angst-ridden best, with discernible shades of David Bowie floating through the mix. Wells’ early work was credited to Jeh Sea Wells, but a couple of years ago, he decided to operate under the band name Welles, which is how his brilliant new five-song EP Codeine is bannered. Whatever name he decides to hang on it, Wells needs to make a couple of full-lengths of this stuff as soon as humanly possible. YDIIYD: Kurt Cobain’s tribute to Sgt. Pepper with “fuck” inserted into every song, literally and figuratively. (BB) 5 p.m. Swarming Branch (Columbus, Ohio) Glam Folk
Swarming Branch is not a band in the conventional sense. The core of the collective is vocalist/guitarist Andrew Graham and
4 p.m. Lemon Sky (Cincinnati) Psych Rock
At the nexus of Prog and Pop and the most classic of Classic Rock, Lemon Sky exists as ephemeral idea and solid structure, as paisley hallucination and tangible reality, as crystalline melodicism and monolithic riffage. In a single song, the Cincinnati quintet can encapsulate the pummeling bravado of Led Zeppelin, the passionate innocence of The Beatles, the intricate head-trip of Pink Floyd and the contemporary heart-punch of Queens of the Stone Age and The Flaming Lips. The exciting thing about Lemon Sky is that its wide-eyed, self-titled first album and emphatically brilliant sophomore release Dos, as good as they both happen to be, are mere hints at the band’s musical potential. A more recent triumph is its unexpected cover of The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy),” one of the more potent entries in the Fab Four’s catalog, which Lemon Sky transforms into a soaring, searing sonic marathon of orchestrated guitars and a Viking rhythm section. Valhalla my ass, Lemon Sky is Rock heaven on earth. YDIIYD: The Beatles and Led Zeppelin going full metal crouching tiger with light saber guitars. (BB)