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Week in Rock: Iraqi Metal and Dirty Orchestras

By

Ben Yakas

Published Feb 26, 2010

Modified Feb 26, 2010

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By

Ben Yakas

Published Feb 26, 2010

Modified Feb 26, 2010

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Photo by Ben Yakas/Gothamist

Acrassicauda's First U.S. Show
Acrassicauda, who Vice magazine once called the "hardest band in Baghdad," played their first public show in the U.S. Tuesday night at Europa in Greenpoint. It was a long-time coming for the four members of the band, who a few years ago were carrying guns to band practice, and later became the subjects of Vice's documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Tuesday night's show was an affirmation of the end to their harrowing journey, surrounded by a pumped-up, air-guitaring crowd.

The music was, in lead singer Faisal Talal's own words, "bone stripping, blood draining, mass destructing, but not masturbating." It was closest in spirit to late-80's, early-90's American metal, particularly Slayer (they briefly covered "Raining Blood" during technical difficulties) and pre-Black Album Metallica. There was a clarity to their sound, which was more melodic than your average speed-metal band. Whatever nervousness the band had coming in was covered up by rapid time signature changes, pounding double kick drums and furiously tapped guitar solos. One of the 70-or-so fans crowded toward the stage was overheard enthusiastically saying, "their metal is so heavy it oxidizes my copper pipes!" In Baghdad, Acrassicauda weren't allowed to engage in headbanging at their shows, and were forced to write songs about the greatness of Saddam; it was a silent triumph, among very loud amps, just to see the musicians thrashing freely and being given room for their long stringy hair to fly around. (You can see a video of the show, including aforementioned air-guitaring, after the jump.)

Dirty Projectors Perform The Getty Address
2009's biggest Brooklyn breakout band, the Dirty Projectors, played the Allen Room at Lincoln Center this past Friday as part of its American Songbook series. The band was joined by the 15-piece chamber ensemble Alarm Will Sound to perform their 2005 album The Getty Address. Lead singer and songwriter Dave Longstreth described the ambitious project to us previously: "The Getty Address was an adolescent attempt to make sense of the entire universe. Don Henley, Aztec mythology and the battlefield at Gettysburg, PA were the closest handles."

The rather strange and uncommercial album was given an appropriately unusual and colorful orchestration, with strings, timpani, piano and xylophone creating the beds of the songs. Saxophone lines mimicked vocals, everyone took turns blowing on beer bottles for percussion, and the room was filled with complicated syllabic chanting from the three intoxicating female singers, Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle and Angel Deradoorian (who were dressed in blue, yellow, and red hoods and capes, respectively). At times, it sounded like Ali Farka Toure covering Captain Beefheart. The setting was fantastic either way; Central Park loomed as the backdrop for the musicians, and the reflections of the headlights of cars and office buildings added extra gravity to songs about shopping malls giving way to wilderness.

The show ended with four songs from last year's Bitte Orca, featuring only the three hooded women, Longstreth on acoustic guitar and Nat Baldwin on upright bass. They performed intimate renditions of "Two Doves," "Temecula Sunrise," "No Intention," and "Cannibal Resource," that showed just how far the band had come compositionally; they still retained many of the lyrical obsessions and non-Western rhythms of the Getty material, but the newer songs were imbued with joyous hooks that sprung like coils and vibrated under the breaths of the audience as they exited the building afterwards.

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Music

week in rock

Ben Yakas

Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.

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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations

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