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Watch the Shoes:

an evening with Black Mountain and Jucifer

I had the good fortune (as well as the price of admission) to attend a show at the Howlin' Wolf last night featuring the low-end promenade of Black Mountain and Jucifer. The Howlin' Wolf is a quaint, poorly-lit and gutted warehouse that evokes a nostalgia in me for the dun, cozy walls of the Cow Haus in it's pre-battlebot-arena days. Both joyfully deliver quality entertainment to those of us seeking a solid rocking, and the crowds that came through the doors of the Wolf last night were served just that. The opening band was a group currently going by the name Black Mountain. They hail from Baton Rouge, and they come swinging a fearful sound amid some very peculiar footwork. Allow me to explain. The band consists of a drummer and two, count 'em, bass players. That's it. Every band member does some vocal work to patch up some of the high end that is, unfortunately, left to be desired. They play a very riff-oriented variety of thundering doom, and, every couple songs, the lead singer lets us in on his little secret pasttime: clogging. And, man, does that guy clog. Even though parts of me are screaming out to call up Lord of the Dance references and ridicule, I have to say that I was thoroughly entertained. Live music rules, which is to say that though I probably would not buy a cd of Black Mountain's music, that was really some badass clogging. The last number, sung solely by the drummer, was called "Sexually Retarded" and I think I was not the only member of the audience to really take their message to heart. Good show, boys.
As Athens, Ga natives Jucifer set up there was an interlude that one attending the show would have thought would have been shorter considering that there are only two members in the band. The di-populist cult that is Jucifer is organised in the form of a lead singer and guitarist, Amber Valentine, and a startlingly rambunctious drummer, Ed Livengood. So after they set up what seemed like an inordinate amount of equipment for a band of two, the show began without a word or hestation as Valentine mounted the stage in her foot-high, frankenstein-monster-like platform boots. She strummed slowly what would be her only slow strumming that evening. Already there was a wall of noise coming from all the effects and processors alight behind her, and Livengood took the stage unassumingly while tying a rag around his head a la Sly Stallone in his Rambo pictures. Livengood may not be very big, but I think if I had to get punched in the face by either him or Rambo, I'd let Rambo take a shot. Livengood strikes me as the kind of drummer that breaks a lot of sticks due to his relentless barrage on the skins and cymbals, which, like Valentine's boots, seem a little oversized for the sake of the expectant audience. Valentine's voice is the song of a siren, a most delicate and sensuous lament, lost among the raging waters that make up the gurgling lead pool of Jucifer's sound, and she towers above her cauldron with the look of a Valkyrie as re-imagined by a manga artist. Indeed, the sounds emitting are the sounds of reckless destruction, not as devised by seventh-graders with fireworks, but as the result of a serious quarrel between the gods. In the tumultuos battle for a chair in Valhalla, canyons are dug, rivers reversed, and mountains upturned. The most ready comparisons would be to bands like Melt Banana or The Melvins, but neither gives a complete picture of the slag that was thrown about in the Wolf last night. She sings, screams, and howls, and he beats the shit out of his drums with a look on his face that reminds one instantly of the furious dementia of Animal, the Muppet. Their set moves seamlessly from song to song, or, more accurately, from thrash to pause and violence to cool reflection. At the end of the night I am quite thankful that there are still bands out there like Black Mountain and Jucifer, not just because I can so easily make comparisons to Norse mythologies, but because they remind me that not all rock is bullshit. Or maybe I learned that it is, but that it doesn't have to be lame, too. No. Forget that. I didn't learn anything last night, and I think that was the most important lesson of all.