Hooves on the Turf

Download “Colors” | It may have been the little-loved Tuesday, bastard child of the week, all yuckified with snow-turned-slush, and a flurry going on still, but Dark Dark Dark played to a Cake Shop basement that was as full as it was the night The Dodos played their secret show there. Most of those present were pirates and vagabonds and people of that nature who I imagine have infiltrated the city of New York for years, or perhaps they had only momentarily gotten off their travels for drinks and music. The band knew their names, and they knew the lyrics to all of the band’s songs. Some of them danced. They were all friends. It made me feel like I was crashing someone else’s party, but it was a good party. Move onward for video!

This being my first time seeing them at a proper “show setup”, however, there were two odd feelings. One, their music is so much a traveler’s, that it didn’t seem right we weren’t in motion; that Cake Shop wasn’t a boat, or a car of a train, and we weren’t going somewhere. I think the music rolled its eyes that it was being asked to sit still. Two, there was reverb on Nona Marie and Marshall LaCount’s roaming voices, but it seemed like the music (Mr. Music from hereon?) wanted to reject that industrial treatment, that the voices just wanted to be raw and amplified by its own might, not some equipment. But Mr. Music was a determined music, and so he would sound great anyway.

In the words of Marshall LaCount, the band’s playing Boston today and two Providence shows tomorrow and the day after, since these places are on the way to Union Pool, Brooklyn, which they play this Friday the 19th. “A geographical joke,” cellist Jonathan Kaiser added; bassist Todd Chandler then led the room to a sing-along. Watch last night’s performance of “Junk Bones”, embedded here for your pleasure.

Cake Shop,
New York, New York
Dec 16, 2008