The Null Device

Steward/Sister Cities/Origami/Sarah Dougher

Live bands: This evening's live music at the Tote was quite good; first up was Steward (aka Stewart Anderson), doing the very final gig of his recent Australian tours. It was a solo gig, with just a guitar, some crunchy noise pedals and a MiniDisc of drum loops (some of which sounded like an 808 being run through various distortion pedals). He didn't bring any Hello Kitty toys or other similar noisemakers, but rocked out nonetheless. If Stewart plays in your town, either solo or in Boyracer, go and see him and be reminded what rock is.

Next up were Sister Cities, a minimal side project of Architecture in Helsinki. Guitar, clarinet, ba-ba-ba harmony vocals, a toy piano and some very lovely, sweet pop. At one point they did what I think may have been a Bruce Springsteen cover (though not that he'd recognise it). Anyway, they're playing again on the 4th at the Town Hall Hotel.

Then came Origami; a slightly punky two-girl indie-pop band (founded by a former member of a certain casiopunk outfit I keep going on about); mostly jangly indie guitars, with a few surprises (some banshee-like screams, and at one stage an 8-bar funk breakdown). Stewart joined them on drums and played really well (though he didn't think so).

Finally, Sarah Dougher came on and played a set, in a singer-songwriter sort of vein; fellow Oregonian Amy Linton of the Aislers Set joined her on drums.

<TANGENT>
Towards the end of their set, Origami did a short (and rather doovy) guitar/Casio instrumental named Nancy Drew; which got me thinking about the connections between a certain type of indie-pop and retro/childhood references. Whether it's retro-hipster irony, indiekid neoteny, subversive punk culture-jamming, or some combination of all three.
</TANGENT>

Anyway, it was quite a good night.

There are 3 comments on "Steward/Sister Cities/Origami/Sarah Dougher":

Posted by: Jimbob http://the-fix.org Sun Jun 23 04:04:16 2002

Subversive punk culture-jamming never involves Casios. I think it's just called "trying to be cute".

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Sun Jun 23 16:57:25 2002

What about Wesley Willis?

Seriously, punk and cute aren't mutually exclusive.

Posted by: Jimbob http://the-fix.org Mon Jun 24 00:44:05 2002

Well... Wesley Willis is another thing entirely. There's no-one to even compare him to.