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SeepeopleS
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Homegrown Music Network, February 2007 Live ReviewSeepeopleS - 1/25/07 The Pour House, Raleigh, NC - High concept on Blount Street SeepeopleS' show at The Pour House on this chilly January night seems destined to be remembered only by those who witnessed it. Tapes of the night emerged fraught with technical difficulties, and all setlists and reviews of the show mysteriously disappeared from the band's message board just days afterward. Government meddling doesn't seem too far from the realm of possibility. After all, the band's arch nemesis Sgt. Slaughterhouse has not been heard from in months, and around the time of his disappearance we at the HGMN received an order for the band's CD The Corn Syrup Conspiracy from the Corn Refiners Association, located right on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC. Something tells me they weren't interested in the bands sprawling brand of socially conscious rock doused with dub and electronic elements. I think the title might have been their concern. Unabashed disdain for the powers that be is a major driving force behind SeepeopleS' music, and the band is consistently upping the ante of their live shows to envelop the audience in scrumptious audio/visual rebellion. Not only does the ear get some of the most sonically engrossing rock being made today, but the eyes are treated to a video screen and a brand new light show. The presentation is consistently morphing with the addition of new videos and images to accompany the band's lush compositions. These aren't your run-of-the-mill concert video projections like swirling colors or screen-saver-worthy graphics - sound/lighting champ Dave Champagne is able to pull from a huge trove of public access images, homemade videos, and other footage to create an experience that is alternately fascinating and mentally jarring. The whole crew emerged at the top of their game this night. Any authority figures in attendance would have certainly been speaking furtively into their headsets at the sight and sound of the Peep's powerful presentation. They opened with a salvo of songs from Corn Syrup including "Sleeping Soul," "Way The World Will Fall," and the recent live addition "Dead Soul Freak," plus the erstwhile fan favorite "Butchers" which seems to grow in intensity with every outing. The caterwauling "Dog Days" gave way to a couple of rare tunes - "The Corn Syrup Conspiracy" proper, which doesn't even appear on the album, and the mournful title track from their first album, "For The Good Of The Nation." Both songs continue to expand in the live setting, and the band's hardcore fans were delighted by the combo. "For The Good Of The Nation" featured nicely juxtaposed slow-mo video footage of the band and their friends that added a weighty wistfulness to the proceedings. The epic "No One Sees" served as a sort of divider between the smorgasbord of time-tested material and the band's special surprise of the evening, which was a run through their upcoming album Apocalypse Cow Vol. 1. Granted, not every song on the album can be performed live. Even for a band as ambitious as SeepeopleS, singer/guitarist Will Bradford admits that some of the new songs would be near-impossible to recreate on stage, which really got me very excited to hear the new album! What followed was a delirious run through new material, full of the emotional highs and lows that come when performing in the context of an album. The witching hour had come, and the show was newly off and running with a dizzying array of visuals and thought-provoking songs. On the screen, clocks ran backwards and forwards at breakneck speeds, we drove through the rainy, shimmering streets of Asheville, saw Bradford in a nightmarish vision of reversed video, and were treated to art and images that gave me an eerie American feeling - a G.E. ad, a picnic scene, people lounging by a pool, interstate traffic, all of it given an oddly detached feeling because of the style of the drawings and images - that the jittery minimalism of "Don't Panic" only increased. I got the feeling that most of the people in the room were exactly the type of folks that might be pictured in such idyllic scenes. "Apocalypse Cow" was next, and if there's one song in the band's repertoire that could land them in heavy rotation, this is it. Catchy lyrics through and through, a bombastic chorus, and a candy-coated pop shell make this tune one of their most formidable. The lyrics portray a leader of troops having second thoughts that he can't act on. He's got to send his boys into battle, regardless of the consequences or his reservations. Writing from varying perspectives is a specialty of Bradford's that is apparently fully realized on the album. "Last Sane Man," "Don't Be So Long," and the tuneful "My Friends" served as a trio of gradually agitated, introspective moments told from a personal stance as opposed to an outside view. This set of songs is reflective and somewhat hopeful compared to the venomous visions found in most of the other new songs, like the utterly hopeless lyrics of "Stranded On The Sidewalk." "Holding" followed "Stranded," and this is a song that is delectable to dissect. Fast and furious with visuals to match, "Holding" presents a thought provoking question - Who would you want with you at the end of the world? The band stomped through this one like there literally would be no tomorrow, wringing energy out of the song's riff-tastic hook. "Battle Cry" was next, and this song really put a dent in my brain. Written from the viewpoint of a dying soldier, "Battle Cry" makes grand use of dynamics, surging from a quiet verse into a maddeningly furious section where the words "I feel nothing" are repeated. At one point, I found myself hoping that everyone at The Pour House and beyond would get to hear Apocalypse Cow Vol. 1. There's simply too much brilliant writing to be ignored, too many feelings to be provoked courtesy of the songs on this album. The interesting structure of "Someday Robots" and "Last Breath" comprised the final portion of the Apocalypse Cow Vol. 1 presentation, and my mind was truly boggled. It seemed long ago that "Sleeping Soul" had fired the show up, and here we were at the end of a highly intense journey that encompassed years of revelation in less than an hour. Upping the ante, the band surged into the longtime live staple "Here We Go" and treated my stunned senses to a heavyweight dub jam to rival all other versions of the song. On the video screen, nuclear blasts were going off throughout the irie tones and psychedelic swirls of the dub madness, and the effect was mesmerizing. "Here We Go" truly was the bomb on this night. The band left the stage amid a frenzy of droning and feedback, and you could have scooped my brain up off the floor of The Pour House. Returning for a concise, thoughtful encore, Bradford performed the last of the Apocalypse Cow songs of the evening solo. "Already Laughing" is a great encore tune, appropriately low-key after the lengthy intensity of the rest of the show, and I would assume it plays a similar role on the album. The band dedicated the last song, "Out Here On Our Own," to several of the longtime Peeps fans, and the tune's affirming lyrics and majestic melodies were the perfect cap to an unbelievable night. Now if only the CIA hadn't electromagnetically erased the recordings... By Bryan Rodgers |
Apocalypse Cow Vol. I