Last Night’s Show: Broken Spindles, Born in the Flood, Iuengliss at hi-dive

Broken Spindles, Born in the Flood, Iuengliss

Better than: Eating chips and looking at a borrowed book of David Byrne’s weird photography of furniture, which is what I would have been doing

Here’s what was weird about this show: Broken Spindles stole all the press. The band features one of the members of the Faint, and that got played up. Promotional materials for the show consisted of Broken Spindles flyers — featuring Joel of The Faint! — with the other bands’ names written on them in pen. But the real headliner last night — both in spirit and in lineup placement — was, and by God was it ever, Born in the Flood.

The show got off to an odd start with Iuengliss, which is actually a
guy named Tom Metz with a laptop. Sounding kind of like Roxy Music
updated by way of Ben Gibbard with a little help from Björk, Metz laid
down some fine electronica, the kind of music I would listen to in my
car. But there’s something awkwardly karaoke-ish about watching a guy
onstage with a microphone and a laptop, and Metz didn’t make that any
better by appearing to feel completely awkward about it as well,
bending his knees stiffly to the beats and avoiding eye contact with
the crowd.

Broken Spindles probably deserved a warmer response than they got, but
then again, they didn’t really seem to be all that into it, either. The
set definitely had its moments — the drummer did some really cool
stuff, tapping an über-danceable Morse-code beat on the hi-hat stand at
one point not least among it — but it was inconsistent. One song
sounded like “My Sharona” as interpreted by a disinterested
Transformer-era Lou Reed, another like Syd Barrett free-form jamming on
a synthesizer with the drummer of Rush. Mostly, though, the sound was
just underdeveloped. The band laid down some really nice grooves, but
just as it was getting the groove hot, it seemed to lose interest,
serving it up crunchy and undercooked. And it’s sad not to do a good
hook the justice it deserves.

For a band that got its name Sharpied onto another band’s flyer, Born
in the Flood absolutely stole the fucking show. After a recording
hiatus of a couple of months, the band was back and in top form, and it
couldn’t have been clearer that it was this band that the sweaty crowd
came to see. And the sweaty crowd, though sweaty, was not disappointed.

There wasn’t a dead moment in the set. The band was polished, focused
and rehearsed. Lead singer and songwriter Nathaniel Rateliff has the
weird tics and magnetic stage charisma of a telecaster-wielding Philip
Seymour Hoffman, dazed, high on glue and pissed. There is a palpable
tension to his presence in the spotlight — he looks as if he may either
vomit or be reborn — and whether crooning sweetly or roaring as if he’s
still in the argument he’s singing about, Rateliff stays as on-key as
autotune. In fact, last night, he didn’t miss a single note.

Critic’s notebook

Random detail: Tom Metz, sole member of Iuengliss, looks like he could’ve stepped directly out of The Wonder Years

By the way: Born in the Flood’s set actually served as a showcase
for label execs from a pretty prominent major-indie imprint.