By Greggory Moore
I had caught The Year Zero at Tour des Artistes. They were playing when I hit Linden. I was talking to some people and not really paying attention, but now and again I sort of tuned in and said, “That’s not bad.” So I made sure to catch them at {open} on August 2nd. It like taking The Pixies and making them more palatable to my mother. This is not a backhand slap at either the band or the parent: it’s just that the latter just doesn’t enjoy dissonance, sonic aggressiveness, and bizarro quirkiness—and the former doesn’t bring it. Instead, The Year Zero employs simple chords arranged in sequences a little too quick and jagged to be pop, flat-soft m/f vocals (f being the lead), and spare-sounding bass/drums/acoustic guitar/tiny keyboard to produce gentle washes of breezy, sometimes slightly danceable, laconic tunefulness. These days computer and the Internet make it so easy to check a band out, why wouldn’t you? There’s no reason, really, so you’ll be wanting this: myspace.com/theyearzero.
It would have turned out to be a great night for expanding my mother’s musical tastes, had she been there, because going on almost past her (but not my mother’s) bedtime was 16-year-old Alessi, a chanteuse (if you can call someone so young such a thing) that my mother would definitely prefer to Björk, despite the fact that both (i.e., Björk and Alessi) move their mouths and enunciate in much the same way. Alessi doesn’t have that bizarre vocal force. That’s okay—she’s not going for that; instead, she and her acoustic guitar spin laconic (really, the word fits both, really), aerated ditties too dark and offbeat to be what one generally thinks of as “folk.” It’s perhaps a natural temptation to talk about a 16-year-old artist—any 16-year-old artist—as “developing”; but I’m not that tempted. Art can be said to exist in a vacuum; it is what it is. Music sounds like it sounds—and I don’t care about the ages of (or much else about) the performers when considering what I’m hearing. Alessi sounded good to me (and it ain’t like I enjoy most of what I hear). A striaghtforwardly diffident stage presence added to the charm of her set. Okay, so the Internet still can’t really get that across very well—but again, there’s that music thing: myspace.com/alessimusic.
This was a Thursday-night show that started at 8:30 (I missed the first band, I Read Her Journal), and there was a pretty good turnout. I’d love to think that there’s increased awareness of cool artsy events going on at {open}. To that end, I should mention more Internet stuff: accessopen.com.