Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Love Parade CD release party: for “All Together Now”





a rudy sizzle review

When: Saturday, March 1st
Where: The Mohawk Place


Considering the fact that late February, and pretty much all of March, is when “real winter” sets in for Buffalo, the attendance for Love Parade’s CD extravaganza was great. I rarely get stoked mid-winter to leave the house, but perhaps knowing one of my favorite live bands was braving the elements, traversing across the 90 West all the way from Brooklyn, to make a special appearance and to celebrate with Love Parade was enough enticement to get me out. Upon seeing Aloke, one may consider earplugs and maybe to have a few shots of whiskey. Not that you need to mute your hearing to enjoy them; they are pummeling sonically, very confrontational on the stage and need to be appreciated on an up-close and personal level. Their poignancy is felt wholeheartedly in each of the band's four members, channeling a vibe akin to that of Fugazi or Quicksand, yet somehow honing in on their very own brand of thick indie-rock that both crushes and captivates. The vocals are washed in an ocean of delay, blending into a wall of sound, balanced on the tightly-woven rhythm section. The Aloke song craft is high caliber, despite the heavy barrage of distorted and effected guitar and vocals. There are some seriously memorable moments in Aloke’s battery of material, namely songs like “Head inside a Suitcase” and “Unresolved”, which are both spectacularly captured on their up coming full-length release recorded by Steve Albini.



Aloke is a very difficult band to follow however, Buffalo’s own noise-laden indie-rockers La Cacahouette were up for the challenge. La Cacahouette are a trio based out of the Queen City and have been steadily developing their craft over the past four years. Since their inception, the “Little Peanut” has managed to build a solid fan base locally, as well as outside of Buffalo with a regular tour roster that has seen the band make it out to the West Coast and numerous jaunts to the Mid-west. Co-fronted by the married duo Pepper Ochsner-Thomas and Gerald Thomas, La Cacahouette’s song craft mixes keyboard and electric stringed instrumentation equivocally in the sonic spectrum. By having the monster-bashing drum skills of Blake Ellman, the songs tend to lean more towards metallic-tinged stoner rock while morphing occasionally into an analog-digital hybrid ala My Bloody Valentine or Stereo Lab. At times the genuinely sweet inflections of Gerald and Pepper’s vocals syrup the sound and offset the powerful tension being built by the chaos of the heavy pounding and cacophony of heavily effected guitars and keys.

I’d also like to take moment to rewind to the beginning of this special CD release party and describe the genius that is Nick Gordon. There are certain types of songwriters, namely the folk-style purists who are offended by anything that digresses or mars the aesthetic of the preconceived folk-roots tradition. Nick Gordon makes this niche seem plausibly real and honestly easy to fall in love with. If you did not know him, you would have thought you were being privy to the roots of beat music, to the old school noir-hearted center of post-modern, post-mortem, post-post-office… etc. I know that Nick’s style is not merely a “shtick” because this fellow means it. If you did not know him, you might be willing to wager the farm on this kid being full of shit. You’d lose the farm once you spoke with him; the man has soul. Song-craft and soul are a married couple of convenience, they tend to stay together as long as they can usually to get the kids up and out of the house and into their own fucked up marriages, families and thus the cycle repeats. Nick’s songs are mad and blunt, dangerous and safe to enjoy, if there are no strings attached.


Love Parade took to the stage very late. The numbers dwindled, but not nearly enough to thwart the Parade of Love’s vigorous song sequence. They performed the track list of the new CD “All Together Now” from start to finish and this apropos statement is definitive of this trio. They all seem to be connected to the same weird muse that makes great pop music seem slightly drug induced, maybe even a bit insane. They keep this secret within the lines of the songs lyrics, such as the line “Driving is fine if you can get to a new place instead of hitting a wall so close to home…” and thus the brilliance of the Love Parade. Jason Sallese has a dry wit that keeps the serious freak-out of manic absurdity at bay. The tongue-in-cheek nature of this band is what draws you in and wins you over. Their performance was nearly flawless, which makes it more than perfect, as they tend to force themselves off the rails every once in awhile. “All Together Now” is a solid representation of this quirky and loveable trio’s musicality.

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About Us

Buffalo, NY, United States
I am an online journalist/blogger/ freelance writer with a strong background in science and deep interest in indie rock.