concert reviews: January 2010 Archives

The Necks have a way of making any concert sound sacred. The crowd--about half capacity for the Bijou, or just a little less--for Saturday night's concert were as quiet as if they were in church, and the trio's hypnotic improv seemed, as it neared a climax, transcendent. It's profound music.

It's impossible to keep up with everything that's going on when they play. The set-up is simple--piano, bass, and drums--and they start off with an almost elemental straightforwardness, each player contributing a short, repetitive pattern that weaves in and out of the others as it builds in pace and intensity. When they really hit a groove, I sometimes heard sounds I couldn't place; as soon as I figured out where it was coming from, the whole thing changed.





Much of the crowd seemed to be from out of town, which isn't a surprise considering that the Australian band is only playing five dates in the U.S. on this tour--two nights in New York and two nights in Chicago in addition to Knoxville. It was the group's second appearance here after last year's Big Ears. 

R&B/funk ensemble Aftah Party walked away with the fourth round of the Square Room's Sound Off competition on Wednesday night. The nine-piece band, featuring local piano giant Donald Brown's sons Keith and Kenneth, laid down some nasty grooves and propelled the biggest crowd in the competition's four-month history into a massive wave of dancing.

Aftah Party finished ahead of Grandpa's Stash, who nailed a version of Radiohead's long and complicated "Paranoid Android," acoustic Americana trio Kelsey's Woods, jam band Ga-Na-Si-Ta, and bluegrass pickers Big Country's Empty Bottle. (The latter band set a record for the longest Sound Off set ever--each group gets time for three songs, and BCEB stretched their three out with some bening instrumental jams. That record was later broken by Ga-Na-Si-Ta.)