Erin's POPPED! Diary for Tuesday, April 10

Bands I Caught: Barking Spiders, Bear is Driving, Normal Love,

Venue: The Avant Gentleman’s Lodge

The Avant Gentleman’s Lodge is located just around the corner from the 40th St. El stop, which makes me love it. As does the tiny factory feel, the hand-painted wooden bench sitting in the lot beside the old ivory car I’d knock an old lady over to drive, the twinkling Christmas lights, the giant paper maiche phoenix dangling from the ceiling, and the trees/mountains/sparkly stars mural that hangs behind the stage. Unfortunately, the wood stove is burning no wood, and it’s only about three degrees warmer inside than it is out. I arrived earlyish and parked myself on a stylish low-slung green couch and watched the other early people arrive. And waited.

Barking Spiders
The Barking Spiders clammer up onstage to play for the assembling crowd. They “Want it All” – or so they tell me – with some serious guitar-god posture playing and enthusiasm. They hop, they scream, they lean against each other while appearing to almost fall over, playing in that rock-band-boy way that I find so fascinating. They have a lot of fun, and the crowd grows larger, and they have fun, too. Especially during a song about riding your bike while high, called, I think, “Special Bong Olympics.” The night holds promise.

Bear is Driving
The first time I saw Bear is Driving was at a basement show in West Philly. The basement was small and packed, and Bear is Driving is a big band. By big, I mean that they call themselves “Progressive/Punk” which means, to them, some very hard-driving guitars. Enough guitar to fill the room and blast back up from the cement floor. And there are flashing lights and a smoke machine. I may not be the biggest fan of the all-consuming crushing guitar sound, but I love it when one of the band members (Corey, I believe, who is listed on MySpace as playing “musical toys”) plays the triangle. Ting! And it’s getting warmer in the Lodge.

Normal Love
I confess that Normal Love is the biggest reason that I came out to the show. Because I love Normal Love. Because their band has two guitars, drums, a bass, and a violin. Because, get this, their music is composed. For all you folks who aren’t former orchestra geeks like myself, this means that they sit down in front of sheet music and play. Which means that someone actually wrote the sheet music. The result is what can only be described as lush, if lush is about dissonance that makes you think of assonance, if lush is the sound of a mynah bird calling from deep in the angry jungle. If my life could get turned into a movie, the kind of movie that is more like a graphic-novel come-to-life, and I got to be the “Creamy on the Outside, but with a Heart of EVIL” kind of Superhero, or the reverse kind, and the movie could have an epic battle in it, this is exactly what I would want the soundtrack to sound like. And then there's this beautiful violin solo that goes on, and on, and on...