West by Swan, Kill Me Tomorrow, The Bahamas & Chico Legends

For anyone who currently thinks their senses are a little too keen, Wednesday night at Fulcrum was a missed opportunity to put the ol’ hearing back in line with a good, solid dulling. The road to permanent hearing loss started with the ultra-bizarre Chico Legends, who got underway with their signature hodgepodge of random instruments / objects, including a slide guitar, a cheesy keyboard setup, a record player, a trumpet and a kettledrum, among others. For anyone who has not experienced the pure audio glory that is this band, imagine all these instruments combined with no trace of melody or structure and only a hint of rhythm (in this case provided mostly by the audience member who had the maraca). In the apparent absence of the member who plays the squeaky chair, recordings of it were looped and played back electronically in a gallant attempt to fill the gap. What also surprised me was the fact that they had more than one “song,” and each one sounded different from the others. If the Chico Legends ever get anywhere, something tells me they could theoretically be the start of some original, new genre of music that absolutely no one will listen to.
The Bahamas stormed the stage next, playing their third show since their formation a few months ago. A three-piece with a drummer who may have been kidnapped from the Planet of Ridiculously Awesome Drummers, they combined a tribal-esque drums and screaming guitar sound with a freaked out, face-bashing rock sound that was refreshingly sparse on vocals. The bassist jumped back and forth between his instrument and a mic’d bongo drum, which he pounded alongside the feverishly flailing drummer while the guitar wailed under a sea of effects and reverb. Though the whole thing was a little shaky due to those sneaky technical difficulties, the band had no trouble building up a potent vibe for the audience to chew on. By the end of the set, three strings were broken — including one on the bass.
And if the Bahamas is a band that can establish a good vibe, Kill Me Tomorrow is a monster of a vibe that almost doesn’t sound like a band anymore. A three-piece that, I was surprised to find out, only included a bass, drums and a guitar, KMT attempted to show the audience what hardcore drugs must sound like through amplifiers. Every instrument was filtered through some medley of effects, including the drums, which came out sounding slightly akin to electronic DJ beats. The bass and guitar were similarly distorted and filtered, which resulted in the guitar bleating like an angry power drill and the bass buzzing and feeding back like a normal guitar. Add the hypnotically repetitive and singularly genius (read: crazy) bass lines and riffs, and song titles like “Skin’s Getting Weird” and “What’s All These Teeth About?” and you might decide to drop your wussy little heroin habit.
Capping off the night with a refreshing return to comparatively normal music and simple progressions was West By Swan, the latest project by Chico scene veterans Dan and Dave Greenfield and Conrad Nystrom, whose previous exploits included Cowboy and The North Magnetic, among others. Their brand of sound was mostly straightforward indie rock, varying moderately in terms of complexity and tempo. The band was slightly predictable, being partial to long intros, slow, contemplative guitar picking and towering buildups, but the wide range of pedals on each instrument provided enough sound variety to keep things interesting, and the skillful drumming of the multi-faceted Daniel Taylor holds everything together tightly. Give this band time to experiment more and get risky and it might easily stamp its name on the town alongside those of its predecessors.
– by Peter Kimmich
– photos by Lania Cortez

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