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| Fleeting
rock: thedamnwells at Valentine’s. Photo
by Mandy Crabtree |
Forget-Me
Pop
By
Kirsten Ferguson
Thedamnwells, the Sixfifteens, Boss Gremlin,
Five Alpha Beatdown
Valentine’s,
May 24
Dubbed “New Rock City” in a recent New York Times article,
New York’s underground rock music scene is the latest media-designated
“scene” du jour. The Times article paralleled the early
1970s rise of CBGB-backed punk bands, such as the Ramones,
Television and Talking Heads, to a current resurgence of stripped-down,
garage-punk, New York primitivism. The article suggested that
more New York City residents might be seeking the visceral
thrills of live music post-Sept. 11. Of course, the success
of the Strokes—who became international sensations virtually
overnight—has helped draw buttloads of media attention to
New York’s nascent garage-rock scene.
New York City band thedamnwells, who played downstairs at
Valentine’s on Friday night, are rarely mentioned in the same
breath as the white-hot city bands (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Walkmen)
singled out by the article. Still, they could stand to gain,
no doubt, from the overall trendiness of their scene. The
buzz about thedamnwells, reportedly, is growing. “We’re from
Brooklyn,” singer-guitarist Alex Dezen announced, repeatedly,
during the Valentine’s show. Musically, however, thedamnwells
played intensely earnest, melodic power-pop, a sharp departure
from the sort of fast, loose and primitive New York City rock
currently in favor. It also represented a complete divorce
from the band’s alt- country connections (thedamnwells drummer
Steven Terry played in Whiskeytown on and off for a couple
of years).
The Bard College-educated Denzen has tagged his band’s sound
as “rock with a lot of problems.” By saying that in an interview,
he seemed to mean that thedamnwells’ crunchy power-pop is
shaped by an experimental flair. More accurately, that description
suited the songwriter’s seeming bevy of personal problems—the
music was rife with emotions akin to psychological angst.
Overall, thedamnwells were tight, but not immensely memorable—my
impression of them was gone as soon as they left the stage.
Quite possibly, though, they are an acquired taste.
The show marked the first official performance by the Sixfifteens,
the latest musical project of former Dryer guitarist Bob Carlton.
The Saratoga Springs-based Dryer, who broke up recently, managed
to reconcile two very different songwriters in the same band,
merging the indie-rock melodicism of bassist-singer Rachael
Sunday with Carlton’s three-chord pop-punk instincts. With
the Sixfifteens, Carlton has extra room to explore the punk
side of the equation—evidenced, perhaps, by the band’s choice
cover of the Ramone’s “I Wanna Be Sedated” early on in the
set. Although they claimed to have had only three practices
under their belts before the show, the Sixfifteens sounded
surprisingly together: their tempo overall a bit faster than
Dryer, and more consistently upbeat. The first song, “All
My Friends,” stood out as a highlight, and the Sixfifteens
enjoyed the largest, most attentive crowd of the night.
Boss Gremlin, a four-piece power-pop band with roots in the
Capital Region, helped open the show. Now residing in New
Jersey, the band played featherweight radio-friendly fare
that did sound surprisingly catchy on songs like “Down in
It.” Five Alpha Beatdown—a garage-rock splinter of Albany’s
John Brodeur and his Suggestions—kicked off the show with
a set of guitar-and-drum cacophony. Dressed in oversized sunglasses
and red polyester pants, Brodeur—or actually, his alter ego
“from Iceland”—concluded Five Alpha Beatdown’s opening set
with a fittingly out-of-tune crooning of Genesis’ “That’s
All.”
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