The final two days of CMJ unfolded in the way of the previous three, with a kind of flexible, relaxed pulse in the atmosphere, which I hadn’t previously associated with the festival. Friday night at Pianos, Los Angeles duo Girlpool played a showcase organized by the music magazine the Deli. Their spare guitar and bass setup allowed their songs to develop an aura of evocative absences – one can imagine where drums would function in their songs, but there’s a spectral power in their vacancy. Girlpool’s songs move rigidly, like frames in a stereoscope, each part a distinct and focused image.
After Girlpool I took the train to Williamsburg to see the Topshelf records showcase at Cameo Gallery. Topshelf are known for signing emo revival bands such as the ones that headlined their showcase, Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) and The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, but openers Wildhoney were assembling a more muscular idea of shoegaze. The Baltimore band’s bassist and drummer were so precise that the more sprawling guitar chords landed on top of the rhythms like mosaics.
Field Mouse, who put out an excellent full-length this year entitled Hold Still Life, synthesize several species of rock, among them shoegaze and the drier, more aggressive alt rock of the Breeders. “What time is it?” singer/guitarist Rachel Browne asked toward the end of their set. “9.11,” guitarist Andrew Futral said. Browne groaned – “Too soon”, she said. “Is that going to become a thing now?” Futral asked. “It’s just a time.” “Time is a manmade structure,” Browne replied. Browne had a sinus infection at the time of the set but it didn’t contaminate her voice, which, like their glossy synths, has a fluorescent quality that illuminates the dark violet blooms of guitar.
At the end of Field Mouse’s set I walked to Brooklyn Night Bazaar, a kind of indoor market/arcade in the south of Greenpoint that also has a stage where Irish five-piece September Girls played an unofficial showcase. Their songs are dreamy and poppy but have an understated gothic essence. Negative images of trees drifted behind them. My night ended with Two Inch Astronaut’s set at Trash Bar, into which a slackened humidity had settled. The Maryland band’s guitar riffs tessellate dizzyingly but still build into coherent and catchy songs.
Saturday I traveled to Cake Shop to see Austin band OBN IIIs, one of the few bands to ever remind me directly of Harvey Milk’s 1997 album The Pleaser. They weave the energy and attitude of Nomeansno into a kind of swinging, bar-band groove. They were followed by Protomartyr, who are from Detroit and who I have trouble describing. Watching them is sort of like watching Guided By Voices recreate themselves as a noise rock band. Their songs are intense and rapidly unpeeling grooves, over which singer Joe Casey and guitarist Greg Ahee act more like percussion than the rhythm section does. “First time I was at Cake Shop they served Sparks,” Casey said. “I got really drunk and yelled at Sean Lennon.”
I made my way to Baby’s All Right for my final set of CMJ, the Brooklyn Vegan showcase. Philly band Cayetana have a sort of uncanny effect: they compress dense words and emotions into minimally composed, catchy punk songs. In Black Hills, singer/guitarist August Koch sings, “Intellectually rigorous with the things we like/ We tell ourselves that we’re all right/ But it’s the numbness that we feel,” and it settles with precision against a four-note bassline.
Beach Slang, who are also from Philly, followed them. They’re deliberately aligned with an aesthetic originally created by the Replacements and refined on early Goo Goo Dolls records; their guitars, drums and bass often seem to blend together into a single melancholy texture. Singer and guitarist James Alex inhabits their songs in a total and effortless way; when he licked the neck of his guitar I almost didn’t register it, his movements were so seamless. At one point he grabbed a can of Modelo beer mid-song, sipped from it, and then strummed his guitar with it. When Alex thanked Brooklyn Vegan and the other bands playing the showcase, he additionally thanked Modelo, “for the vibes.”
Ann Arbor band Pity Sex played a set of consuming, insistent shoegaze, only breaking from their established style for an athletic cover of Gigantic by the Pixies. Recently reformed emo band the Jazz June headlined the showcase; their three proper albums are among the most mercurial and gorgeous emo records available. Their new songs are more straightforward – they evolve gently. “We’re playing a new song so you can grab a beer now,” singer and guitarist Andrew Low joked, but the new material settled nicely against the older, more discursive songs, functioning in the set as precisely cropped breaths of air.
I watched bands engage with new material throughout the week; they almost uniformly apologized to crowds for playing unknown songs. Regardless, this gravitation toward the new embedded a kind of relaxed confidence in this year’s CMJ. There seemed less of the rush to isolate a buzzworthy band, and the festival more resembled a constellation of people trying new things, deepening or refining their work.
