This past week, Vans put on three free shows at the Middle East as part of their House of Vans concert series. On Wednesday, February 19, they not only installed an entire snowboarding half-pipe on the street, but also managed to book Earl Sweatshirt, XXYYXX and Cities Aviv for one sold-out night. Of course, you’re free to decide for yourself which one of those things shreds more gnar, but after this show, I’m not putting my money on anything remotely related to Sochi.
Cities Aviv’s brand of noise-rap lies somewhere between clipping and Marijuana Deathsquads in terms of sheer producing wizardry. Without a DJ to blend tracks together, his set varied between long, industrial droning sections and stagnated bass drops. All of it sounded like he was rapping in a car manufacturing plant run by robots, but like, in a good way. I’m not sure if I was the only one into his set (much of the crowd was too busy getting free screen-printed Vans t-shirts), but this guy deserved a lot more attention than he got. To be fair, his bizarre attempts to crowd surf five minutes into his set probably didn’t help. If Cities Aviv gets a DJ to help him out, and the right crowd, I’m convinced that he’d absolutely destroy any venue that took a chance on him. I’ll be watching to see what this guy gets himself into next.
XXYYXX is an experimental electronic producer out of Orlando, and he brought the southern nightlife with him. Much like Thursday’s House of Vans performer Baths, XXYYXX relies on pre-programmed laptop tracks alongside live mixing and samples via what appeared to be an Ableton controller. His set was fantastic, melding bass-dropping dance tracks with psychedelic, trancy stuff in between. I thought I caught a Kendrick Lamar “YAWK” sample during one of his songs, but it was hard to tell. It’s worth noting that XXYYXX is also blessed with a hysterical stage presence. He waxed poetic on Cities Aviv, dedicated an especially weird track to his girlfriend and brought the house down with a hilarious rap-along to “I’m Praying for a Brick” to close the set. If this guy did a wedding DJ gig, nobody would remember who got married, much less what happened last night. He’s worth checking out for sure.
But then Earl came on, and the place exploded. Calling someone “nasty” is a compliment, right? Because Earl was nasty. Earl stunk up the joint. Earl was so foul I had to call the exterminator. Earl’s first half destroyed everything and everyone with extreme prejudice.
My gripe with Earl’s studio work, especially last year’s Doris was that his voice never really got above a monotone. It’s a lyrically entrancing album with some fantastic producing on tracks like “20 Wave Caps” and “Hive.” But there’s no question that Live Earl is ten times more captivating than Studio Earl. Studio Earl drawls at you and keeps on chugging without really getting fully invested, attitude-wise. But a pissed off, hyped-up Live Earl spits on your face with no backing tracks, excellent crowd control and serious attitude. Live Earl can conquer a mountain, smoke a fat blunt on the peak, and then toboggan down it without breaking a sweat. I’m all for Studio Earl’s dry, faded-out delivery, especially when I’m just walking home in the rain, but I absolutely did not expect this level of crazy. Strangely, the tracks from his earlier, self-titled tape (especially “Kill”) were his best tracks of the night. I disliked that album even more than Doris but Live Earl threw himself into those tracks like a true professional. You can’t really go wrong with a track that makes every gangly young person scream, “JUST WATCH, IMMA KILL ‘EM ALL.”
My only real criticism of the set was energy-related; both Earl and Vince (we’ll get to him) seemed to get pretty tired as they went on. Before they ended with “Earl,” he remarked, “So I got bad news for y’all, and good news for me: this is my last song.” Nothing too offensive, really. As we all know, Odd Future has a somewhat checkered history with Boston shows. Some crowd confusion over a “which side can cheer the loudest” contest right afterwards made everyone laugh it off anyways.
Earl brought along Vince Staples for a large majority of the tracks, and he didn’t disappoint. Vince’s turns on “Hive” and “Burgundy” drew huge responses from the crowd, and he kept up a great attitude the whole night. We got to hear a few unreleased tracks from his upcoming release, Shyne Coldchain Vol. 2, and they were all catchy and well performed. Definitely worth a look when it comes out on Februrary 27th.
Overall, Wednesday’s House of Vans show absolutely exceeded my expectations. All three acts destroyed the place, and I hope to see them again soon. Hopefully for free, but we can’t always get what we want.
