Like Dominos: The Big Pink @ The Bowery Ballroom, NYC 12/3/2009

The Big Pink

Bowery Ballroom NYC

12/3/2009

Here's the problem for The Big Pink: they know a couple of songs, and they know them well. And they have an album, A Brief History Of Love, that's pretty fucking good. Then they go and sell out two nights in New York and suddenly have to reproduce the giant bombast of the album live, while maintaining the frosty intimacy.

Rather than work on studying the tricks of the masters as they are now (Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine), the Big Pink, as a duo grown into a stage of four (including token female drummer), decided to funnel their hazy, droning lovesongs into a cock-rock swagger live, play the songs they (and the audience) knew and get the fuck on with their lives.

I mean, admittedly, it was easy to get caught up in what The Big Pink has going for them: great fucking songs. "Velvet" was intense and incredible, and "At War With The Sun" live hints at where the band may go next-a poppier, less-gloom more-glam direction. Unfortunately, though, The Big Pink, at least those dudes with stringed instruments, decided they really wanted to do the "cool thing (kool thing?)" they "saw Thurston Moore do this one time".

Rock star hint: don't ever, ever, EVER, turn yourself to the amp and start doing the "I am going to make a wall of fucking feedback" thing unless you plan to actually DO it-that's called "writing a check your ass can't cash", particularly when you're The Big Pink and your album, you know the one you sold out two nights in NY to support, is littered with diamond-flecked noise assaults. I'm not sure if the band decided to be kittenish on their first night and decimate on the second, but at Bowery the noise was sadly, shockingly absent. As were those moments of breathless ecstasy the record whispers into ears and hearts. So no "Golden Pendulum". None of the softer, snowfall songs. 10 songs, in and out, but of course not without dropping "Dominos" to end the night.

"Dominos" is a song so great, so well-played, so genius/misogynist and yet sing-along-anthem that everyone in the Bowery had their hands in the air, chanting along with the chorus of "these girls fall like dominos", that it basically hid the fact that The Big Pink played for about 45 minutes and then left without a word. I sort of hoped-kept hoping, actually-they'd come back and unleash "Golden Pendulum" with a Kevin Shields-ian fury, a 15 minute noise freakout to show that they were a band that knew their past and their future and intended on fucking bringing it in a live setting.

That didn't happen...but "Dominos" is still stuck in my head, and will be for days. At the very least? These accidental rock stars, these...kids....and they are just that, kids....can write a damn good pop song. And live? Well, live, they know all the notes, and have all the postures...and that's about it.

Photos Courtesy Kristina Weise

Comments

[Josie]

Kids? I think they are 28 and 30, respectively. Thurston Moore was 23 when Sonic Youth formed. Kevin Shields was 20 for MBV.... If you're calling The Big Pink kids, where does that put you? 50? 60?