"How does it feel to eat molasses while you're being fucked?" inquires bassist Tareq Wegner during Seattle experimental soul band Night Beats excellent set opening for the Black Lips on Friday night at Bowery Ballroom.
I wouldn't know but it is the sort of thing that appears to throttle thru your brain during this intensely crafty half hour of proto-punk. Opening acts are supposed to be good not great, but this trio was simply great, they jammed hard, they experimented with feedback, using beer bottles, and invited Ian from Black Lips on stage for the last song and made a tremendous noise. They played their own songs better then on this years debut album and though I didn't know a single song going in, going out I ran spotify and listened to last years terrific H Bomb EP. all the way home
The lead singer is a soulful bluesy player and the drummer a real knockout, hitting his set with sticks and maracas.And they look terrific: Tariq has a white man Afro, leader singer guitarist Lee Blackwell a ponytail and drummer James Tranger who is a mix of Cousin It from the Addams Family and Animal from the Muppets. They look cool and they take in their own space and merge when necessary. Tight as a motherfuck , Night Beats merge soul with psychedelic jams with rockabilly. The penultimate number was a hold steady fission of "Bo Diddley" and a cat being strangled by an electric guitar. A saxophonist joins em for some of the kronkiest bleating since the "No New York" scene of the early 1980s.
Night Beat's sound hits you in waves of noise and distortion with the songs playing hide and seek before tearing thru the edges. Barely two years old, they are what the young Black Lips must have been like (without all the backstory).
They win the audience over and I mean over. Halfway through a moshpit starts, and by the end Tariq is crowd surfing and Lee is buckled down at his knees playing Hendrixiy bottle neck with real bottles.
An exhilarating set and try the album but don't let it make you miss em live.