Confession: I only made it to one day of the first annual Green Music Fest. But it was pretty awesome! I hope they do it again next year. For just getting started, it seemed to be very well organized and it was a day of extremely wonderful music. Two groups stood out in my mind; I heard four but you know, not everyone wows you! And it was freakishly hot and humid so the whole thing was an endurance test. I felt like the whole thing was asking, “Just how indie are you?” even though the crowd was way less hipster than what I saw at Pitchfork Fest. 
Turns out I’m pretty indie afterall. I know you’re breathing a sigh of relief, having feared for my fragile, dark, and twisted soul. But in the end, those damn guitarists won me over and drew me out of the shade and away from the comfort of the ice cream stall. I turned up in time to see Sybris, a band that I’m sorry to say, I’ve never heard before. Where the hell have I been? I should have been listening to this band for the past six years they’ve been together, they are soooo up my alley! They meandered up to the front of the stage, looking unimportant and unassuming as most indie bands are wont to do. But the moment Angela Mullenhour opened her mouth wide to sing it was all over for me. This was no wilting, little, waif of an indie girl who would cozy up to the chords of her guitar-heavy, drum-pummeling, male bandmates. Angela Mullenhour takes her expansive voice and wraps it right around that shoegazy/metal drone of sound. She carries her own quite well on guitar too. Listening to ”The Best Day In History In Ever” now, in it’s recorded form gives only a hint of what this band is capable.
But it does give you a very good idea of how this is a band and not a girl and her backup players. You know how I go on about guitarists, and partly that’s true, they are fucking sexy as fuck. But the rest of the story is simply that standing there, in the midst of someone, anyone, playing an instrument who’s completely skilled at what they’re doing and can make it do exactly what they want, is a tremendously intoxicating experience. This band is a group of four people who work this out somehow on a regular basis and have been for quite a while now. The music builds and crashes and stalls and as you’re holding your breath, waiting for Eric Mahle to bring his sticks down hard on the drums, Angela sings exactly what you expect. Go buy Sybris’ album, Into The Trees. I don’t know how I missed it last year, I hope you didn’t!
Needless to say, Shawn Podgurski on bass and Phil Naumann on guitar masterfully provided the high this junkie needed on Saturday. Their final song ended with a huge surge of reverberation and clash of cymbals which stretched out mercilessly into the heat of the afternoon’s haze. Phil’s last swing of his guitar, near the amp, bounced the sound back and forth, and then reduced it to just a low buzz as he lay it down gently on the stage, which he finally killed off with a few, teasing twists of the knobs on his amp. That perfect little flourish of showmanship made my day, as I watched him saunter off, pretending none of that was really intentional after all. Indie bands just never take a bow, do they?
Later in the evening, as it cooled a bit at last, Tapes ‘n Tapes took the stage. I had been waiting for this, I bought the tickets just for this act. And they did not disappoint, not one little bit. They were a whole lot of what Sybris were not: quirky, fast, clean, and sharp. There was no resonating sound here, no drawing out of long notes. “Hang Them All” sounded great. All the songs they squeezed into their 40 minute set were really high-energy pop. And a new song was unveiled, after much fiddling with a bright, shiny, red guitar and some inane self-mocking stage banter. If that was any indication of what the new Tapes ‘n Tapes album holds, we are in for a real treat, darlings! Go check out their MySpace for all the great press quotes and sound bites and videos. This band is well covered by bloggers and music journalists in general, and deservedly so. They also have a pretty amazing YouTube page, so feast your eyes there. Pop over to their site to buy their latest album, Walk It Off, and support them. It was a perfect day of indie endurance testing, all in all. I’m proud to have beat the urban August summer’s heat to have heard two wonderfully different but equally amazing bands, (as well as the others not mentioned here who were very good!) xoxo
