Photos by David Kinchen
Throughout roughly an hour and a half, the genre-defining post rock quartet, This Will Destroy You, moved me through a beautiful spectrum of emotions: excited to peaceful to serenely melancholy. TWDY’s music strikes at emotion so tangible and poignant that I saw more than a few eyes water up at Brighton Music Hall on Thursday night. As a fellow show-goer said to me upon leaving the venue, “Holy shit. That got me right in the feels.” The range of TWDY’s emotional impact reflects the band’s most triumphant quality, which isn’t Chris King’s skillful shredding or the punishment Alex Bhore deals to his kit. TWDY are masters of orchestration and versatility in recorded or live forms.
But, before TWDY unleashed their colossal energy, Austin’s Future Death encountered Brighton Music Hall’s notorious audio issues. On the whole, Future Death sounded tight, which is ironic given how spasmodic and chaotic their brand of noise-punk fused with pop fused with black metal fused with postpunk sounded. Future Death sounded a little like if Deerhoof, Lighting Bolt and Melt Banana were all fused in some weird, beautiful Cronenberg-esque way. With that in mind, I’d like to comment on Angie Kang’s vocals, but I do not feel qualified to issue any sort of reflection. The audio levels were so inadequate that Kang’s performance was completely consumed by the reverb-drenched guitar and bass tones alongside the occasional breakdown. Straight up, I could not hear a word she said. It’s really a shame, because Future Death’s recordings sound intriguing and idiosyncratic.
Given the audio difficulties, objective criticism of Future Death’s set is a little unfair. I would love to hear Future Death sound like Future Death, and I hope they roll through Allston again sometime soon. Fortunately for everyone, TWDY avoided the same technical difficulties as Future Death.
“Play Osario!” shouted one crowd-goer after TWDY had spent forty minutes crushing us with a self-described wall of sound. Each member of the quartet chuckled, and guitarist, Jeremy Galindo, replied, “Wow. You’re the only person to ever request Osaria. Congratulations,” and with an amiable humor continued by stating “too bad we don’t take requests, because we fucking practice.” That comment made me acutely aware of why TWDY’s set so thoroughly impressed me: the orchestration.
Not only did the song selection and set order move through an exemplary showcase of TWDY’s strongest work, but also felt so meticulously practiced that every note felt deliberately selected. This feeling of meticulous craftsmanship is even more remarkable given how easily the finer textures could be glossed over because of the magnitude of TWDY’s sound.
The band pulled from their entire back catalog of three albums and three EPs for Thursday night’s set. Out of the thirteen songs played, only four, “Dustism,” “Invitation,” “War Prayer,” and “New Topia,” came from the album the tour was ostensibly touring in support of, Another Language. As a huge fan of the most recent album, I was a little bummed to not hear TWDY focus on more of their newer material. But, like the only man to ever request “Osario,” I should just let TWDY make the decisions for me. By drawing on different albums that each reflect very different styles of post rock song writing, TWDY kept the audience in an attentive daze.
TWDY’s near-decade-spanning set list encompassed enough diversity to keep me completely engaged through perfectly timed shifts in tempo and tone. The post-rock legends impressed me like almost no other band has this year.
Photo Gallery by David Kinchen
