On Saturday night, I did believe the hype and decided to check out the British band Alt-J which was playing a beyond sold-out show at the Bootleg theater. I had read some reviews, had noticed the praise – except from Pitchfork, but who cares? – and looking at the long line formed outside the Bootleg, I could tell the hype was real. For two hours, I was ruminating the idea to just leave as I didn’t have a ticket and was on stand by, or stay and try my luck. After all, if people were willing to sacrifice two hours of their life to see them, may be the long wait was worth it after all?
When I finally get in, around 11:30 pm, I found the best place I could in the packed theater, and the quartet took the stage very shortly afterward. Alt-J (the key combination that gives a ∆ on a Mac!) are almost unknown in the US, or you would think so. Their first album, ‘An Awesome Wave’, was just released on September 18th in the US, but has been in the top 20 in the UK.
It was incredible to see how many fans already knew all the lyrics, as they were waving their arms holding their iPhones, packed on the floor of the theater. As I was watching the scene, I was thinking about the pressure that these guys were probably under,… with just one album, they have already been compared to one of the biggest bands alive, Radiohead, and nominated as a favorite for the prestigious Mercury Prize.
I am not sure about this ridiculous comparison, although I certainly heard some Radioheadish moments here and there, but Alt-J’s pretty music had running-in-cascades-of-voices harmonies, a lot of almost-a-cappella moments, and was building dreamy-sleepy landscapes. But may be that was the problem, as the four guys often seemed to vanish behind their angelic choir-like choruses and hushed vocals.
There was no doubt that the rhythms were intricate and original, with a lot of stop-and-start effects and I could totally understand the appeal when they played ‘Tesselate’, with pounding keys and the weird sadness that Joe Newman‘s vocals were conveying. Strangely, the fluid piano, the almost church-like soothing harmonies, were morphing into druggy-dirty-dancey parts, more exotic than I could have predicted at first, the perfect example being ‘Fitzpleasure’ and its light Indian flavor spiced up by funny-voice vocals. I could write a whole paragraph about the vocals, let’s just say that they reminded me at times Devendra Banhart’s, without the tremolos, and since their nostalgic song ‘Matilda’ is apparently about Natalie Portman’s character in Besson’s movie ‘Léon’, I thought the comparison was appropriate. However, I couldn’t make sense of most of the lyrics in the rare cases I could actually hear them, but I would never criticize a band for writing cryptic lyrics.
Their music was really hard to categorize, and probably shouldn’t, one song was carrying you into different territories in just a few minutes as there was a lot going on at once. The inventiveness of the songs was quite nice and kept me interested till the end, but the blown-away moment never really happened. From where I was, I couldn’t totally enter the music. May be they were a little too far, may be they weren’t loud enough, maybe I go to too many ultra-loud punk shows, but I found their presence just too ghostly from the back of the room. And it wasn’t because they weren’t communicating with us, they actually said they were ‘super stocked’ while looking at the large crowd, thanked us several times and visibly couldn’t believe the positive response from American fans.
All set long, it was very quiet and delicate music, with thin textures of glimmering-scratching electronica à la Thom Yorke, sporadic and discreet drumming, and vocal harmonies over harmonies (may be too many?) more monk-like than Fleet Foxes, melting with Indian tribal riffs. But strangely, the most surprising moments were always turning into the most comfy and familiar soundscapes.
Setlist
‘Intro’
‘Ripe and Ruin’
‘Tessellate’
‘Something Good’
‘Dissolve Me’
‘Ms’
‘Fitzpleasure’
‘Matilda’
‘Breezeblocks’
‘Bloodflood’
‘Handmade’
‘Taro’
