Fire the soundman.
All the effort and artistry that Serena Maneesh put into their performance at Portland’s Berbati’s Pan on Thursday, March 25th was for naught, because of truly terrible concert sound. If the band messed up – and they certainly weren’t flawless – it was overshadowed by a brutally harsh, brittle high range and muddy mids. Turn out was light and there’s a good possibility that’s because of the club’s reputation for bad sound.
The show began moodily, with a blast of CO2 fog and eerie blue & black light and a chilling, hair-raising pick slide. The drums opened up and moved from pulsing to pummeling, and costumed band-leader/guitarist Emil Nikolauson gyrated with maracas.
Slowly but surely, the music gathered momentum, growing from a morass of effects and distortion to more melodic guitar work and vocals. A look at the set list makes this interesting, because they were moving from the latest album to previous. A post-concert listen to the music, programmed in order of the set, list offered an intriguing, more evocative experience.
And for a couple of moments, during “Selinia’s Melodic Fountain” and “Chorale Lick”, the two guitarists traded leads that somehow emerged from the cacophony. That didn’t last long.
Despite the bands noisy, shoegazer bliss (apparently, the monitors were just fine), the sound was all but unlistenable. Serena Maneesh might have played with competence but it was lost in a mess that, putting it diplomatically, was oppressively loud: ‘Oppressive’ in the sense it obscured any music being made, came between the audience and the artists. This seemed all the more tragic considering the friendly, affable nature of the band, who were genuinely gracious toward the audience and stayed afterward to chat with fans.
Moving back and forth between dreamy shoegazer density and strolling rock swagger, Depreciation Guild opened for Serena Maneesh like they had something to prove – they did.
At times there was a Cocteau-ish rapture that moved to a Blur bite. Two guitar players traded leads while a drummer shored up the foundation. When queried, band members admitted that everything they played had little more than a working title – they’re that new.
For personality, they might want to replace the MacBook with a real bass player. But maybe not. Depreciation Guild pulled it off quite well just as they are, playing like they had a chip on their shoulder, playing like they needed it, playing like it was their last chance. Good stuff from a great new group.
