Catfish Haven/Pink Mountaintops, Second Story 6.1.2006

Catfish Haven put on exactly the type of show I expected---insanely tight, feverish blues/soul music, sort of like if the Black Keys let themselves listen to a few more Otis Redding records and loosen up a little. They're a crack live band and a great opening act---a stripped-down, indie rock version of the journeyman swamp-boogie bands that I imagine play sweaty juke joints through the South, although I have no evidence of this. But playing in a relatively desolate college town on a June weeknight (to a half-full room, which both surprised and pleased me to no end), they were a 350 horsepower engine vibrating in place on stage. The long, straight hair of lead singer/guitarist George Hunter (stop the "Catfish Hunter" jokes right there) was dripping with sweat after the first number as he compensated for his limited (and unnecessary) vocal range by channeling his desperate, pleading lyrics through a heat-scorched, guttural delivery that testifies to no training and all ballsy passion. The rhythm section (and this band is 99 percent chugging rhythm) played off one another to great effect, especially bassist Miguel Castillo, who competes for attention with Hunter by barely containing his bodily contortions while bottoming the music. Dig "Please Come Back" (mp3). And do check them out live when they come through your town. And please, leave Bitter McIndiecred at home and allow yourself to shake a little. That's sort of what you're supposed to do at concerts and what-not.

Pink Mountaintops I'd never seen before, but I had seen Black Mountain (the first thing I ever typed here) and, despite my verbosity back then (at the time, I was more than happy just to have a venue to describe something), I was less than impressed with their set. They somehow managed to strip the fever from the recorded versions and replace it with overly druggy ambience. And they didn't even play "No Satisfaction" or "Modern Music," which is what I wanted to hear. So, while I was excited to see Pink Mountaintops (McBean's BM side-proj) last night, I was a little dubious---they're the druggier half of McBean's muse and I don't deal well with extended atmospheric ruminations live--they make me feel every ounce of the ache raging through my joints while I stand and watch, unable to move and relieve the pain of stability. But when the band opened with my favorite, "Plastic Man, You're the Devil" (original post here), it sounded fresh, wide and colorful, aided obviously by the fact that there were like 8 people on stage including McBean, and more than enough of them devoted their energies to the underappreciated art of hand percussion (shakers, conga drums, tambourine). This gave the performance a communal vibe, which to me is inherently political, all fine when the song is a protest song off an album called Axis of Evol. It seems that McBean is incapable of penning a song without an undercurrent of vibe-y discontent---all of the wonderful Black Mountain is colored by a sense of active disillusionment, which is what gave it the immediacy that made it so great. But I get the feeling that PM is a goof of sorts, a piss-take allowing McBeam (who was wearing uncomfortably short shorts last night, see below) to play with rock cliches; pressing Start on the smoke machine (which he did several times), and singing songs like "I (Fuck) Mountains," which seems more than passingly Hendrixian, the achingly slow "Rock and Roll Fantasy," the skin-tight boogie of "Can You Do That Dance," which seems more like a dare than anything else, and "New Drug Queens" (mp3). PM's set perfectly wrangled the collected energy of the band to do what was their most important job of the evening (for me)---play a more intense, memorable set than their opening act, and allow me to move around a little bit. And they almost did.