by Ruth Milne

These Arms Are Snakes, Maps and Atlases and Keyboards and Computers were scheduled to perform last night at the Imperial Inn in downtown Rapid City.

The flyer also predicted one more band to be announced. That band turned out to be From the Muses of Mt. Helicon, Ben Lemay’s newest project. Local music fans may remember him as the violinist from MT Bateaux last summer.

Ben Lemay, still on violin. The music was moody, a mellow pulse, almost trancelike, like a less disturbing Dear Chechnya,. A fog machine added to the atmosphere.

His voice reminded me of someone but I couldn’t figure out who. After the set, I had a Cure song stuck in my head, so I’m guessing a bit like Robert Smith? The singer apologized between songs for the weird lyrics (I hadn’t noticed). He said they were actually a transcript of The Theogony — that explains the band name. Ah, good old Hesiod, that famed penner of rock anthems. From the Muses of Mt. Helicon had canned drums for most of their set, until the final song when — check out that guy to the back right.

Well hey, Mr. Tambourine Man. It’s Feedback & Distortion’s very own Andrew Gorder on percussion.

The Imperial is a decent venue, centrally located, but because few shows have been held there, the turnout was low. A shame, because attendees got more than their money’s worth ($8 at the door) from this one.

The show took place in Imperial’s basement, which reminded me of the old Venue 8 basement — meaning, it was low-ceilinged, smoky and suffocating.

It’s a computer… playing a keyboard. Must be time for Keyboards and Computers.

They said their popular song “Leg-Oh Maniac!” was about Charles Manson. Maybe that makes me like the song less, maybe it doesn’t.

Most of their other songs are about Star Wars.

Keyboards and Computers introduced Jestin from the aforementioned Dear Chechnya, as the guest singer on one song. It was like Andy Kaufman’s famed Mighty Mouse performance; for most of the song, Jestin stood up there in an ill-fitting and presumably borrowed jacket, hands in pockets, just waiting for his moment.

And then his moment came. He screamed, “Breakdown, this is a breakdown!” a few times, and resumed his “patiently waiting” pose for the rest of the song. Kaufman all the way.

As you can see, Keyboards and Computers T-shirts are available if you know the right people. Namely, band members.

Up next was Chicago-based indie band Maps and Atlases, not to be confused with The Photo Atlas, who won’t be here until April 30. This guy, the bassist, was just made of cool.

Maps and Atlases played amazing, obsessively patterned music, fast and unpredictable, fading from frenzy to melody and roaring back again. Note the bassist, at right, still made of cool. That’s a shoelace around his head.

Their sound was experimental and unique. It felt like listening to jazz at times, the structure was so unfamiliar and unlike ordinary pop music.

And a closeup of the guitarist’s facial hair. You, Nick Cave and Jason Lee, dude.

These Arms Are Snakes, from Seattle, wrapped up the evening. They were wild. The bassist rocked pretty hard…

And the guitarist got up on a chair a couple times.

But the spotlight was always on this electric guy, the band’s vocalist/go-go dancer. The aggressive music and chaotic performance were so Joycean that it can’t be accurately conveyed in complete sentences, so here are my notes from the set: “Distorted vocals, saliva strings, writhe on floor, shimmy, strangle self with cord, center of attention, drenched, odor.”

He moved so rapidly that most photos looked like this one, just a flailing limb or jostling shoulder or flash of stringy hair.

He had kind of a Michael Jackson thing going, too. His songs were indecipherable and his antics were over-the-top but I could not look away.

He wrapped his cord around his head several times throughout the performance, and seemed to expect other people to want the cord around their neck too. Musical talent aside, he didn’t seem like a friendly guy; at one point he ridiculed an audience member for sitting down.

Looks like a creepy guy, yeah?

But he buys his underpants at the Gap.

At one point, all the band members left the stage, returning a moment later with stacks of chairs. They make good props, it seems. The singer sat on them, fell over on them, crawled under them, stood on them, waved them around.

By the end of the night he was drenched with sweat and saliva, shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t tell if he was limping or sauntering.

For more photos from the show, check out Mike Vinton’s work here.

by Ruth Milne

This was news last week…

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) — Paul McCartney was introduced Wednesday as the first artist signed to Starbucks Corp.’s new record label.

I’m not a McCartney fan, so this doesn’t bother me much beyond the whole “Beatle signing to a coffee company” aspect. Never had their coffee, probably won’t buy their CDs either.

But what’s next, Elton John signing to an IHOP record label? Releasing CDs that look like pancakes? That could be cute, actually.

How do you feel about this?

By Ruth Milne

These Arms Are Snakes, a hardcore band from Seattle on Jade Tree Records, will perform tomorrow night at the Imperial Inn in downtown Rapid City. Admission is $9, and the show starts at 7 p.m.

Photo by Robin Laananen

Also appearing will be Maps and Atlases (who, incidentally, have one of the neatest websites I’ve seen so far this week) and local Jedi synth-pop band Keyboards and Computers. One more opener is still to be announced.

That’s not bad for a Wednesday night in Rapid City, South Dakota.

But it is a Wednesday, which makes it difficult for the average working Joe to attend. And the average working Ruth too, for that matter.

Sometimes it seems like we get many more midweek concerts than weekend concerts, and I’m not just talking about these underground shows. Big civic center acts regularly take place on weeknights as well. Do you think this is because we’re a handy stopover between bigger towns?

If I were in a band, I imagine I’d schedule Minneapolis on a Saturday and leave Monday for a town like Rapid City.

By Andrew Gorder

Panda Bear - “Person Pitch”
Label - Paw Tracks

I’d always hoped that I wasn’t not the only one who wished that my life had a soundtrack, and around the time iPods became ubiquitous, I knew for sure that I wasn’t alone. For more reasons than one, having your headphones on while you grocery shop, do your laundry, fly a kite or eat cereal can make these everyday activities a little more enjoyable. Anyone who has taken a walk with their mp3 player on random knows that sometimes a song will surface that seems to match your surroundings with remarkable accuracy (this is usually about the same time you zone out and step into oncoming traffic). Panda Bear’s new album “Person Pitch” harnasses those anomolous (and sometimes dangerous) moments, when music falls in sync with life.

Panda Bear is the pseudonym of Noah Lennox, who is one-fourth of the New York based acid-folk group Animal Collective. As a group, Animal Collective has released a number of albums with varying contributions from Panda and its three other members, who go by Avey Tare, Deakin and Geologist. Their rhythmic, experimental form of folk music is one of the truly unique sounds that, at first, is almost abrasive but doesn’t take long to grow on you. Each member has various side-projects and collaborations, but Panda Bear is arguably the most prolific animal in the collective.

Were it created by any other artist, Person Pitch’s multi-layered combination of simple musical elements would probably sound chaotic and cluttered, but this is not the case. At its base, each track has a very basic rhythm, and the other musical facets follow suit, spinning loosely out of control but never falling out of tempo. The vocals would be impossible to describe without drawing comparison to the reverb-weighted melodies of the Beach Boys, but the similarities don’t make the sound any less distinct. Like the instrumentation, the tribal-sounding vocals and random noise samples are kept in balance so that no particular layer dominates the others; so much so that it took me a few listens before I even noticed the background samples that accompany almost every track (the subway, a man laughing, an owl, a nascar race?).

Person Pitch is about taking old ideas, pedestrian words, catchy music and commonplace sounds and articulating them in a way that is brand new. No matter what your preferences are, you will find at least a fragment of your musical tastes buried somewhere in Panda Bear’s creation. If you like Brian Wilson, camping, reel-to-reel or bamboo then you should get this album. And, on your next walk, you might even turn the volume down, taking in both your own music and the music of your surroundings.

by Ruth Milne

Two major indie bands, Magnolia Electric Co. and the Thermals, co-headlined a show last night at The Retired Enlisted Association.

I’ve taken so many photos recently of opener Seth Brian that I didn’t bother this time. I know he’s a fan of Jason Molina, singer/songwriter for Magnolia Electric Co., and I wondered if he were nervous performing with Molina in the crowd. I know if anyone I idolized were to read this blog I would just die.

Of course, Seth Brian plays music far better than I write, so it may not be as much of a concern for him.

Up next was We All Have Hooks for Hands, an indie rock band from Sioux Falls. If the name were true, this band would boast 18 hooks. Yes, that means there were nine musicians onstage, a virtual indie rock symphony. I couldn’t photograph the entire band at once; outside the range of this photo, there is another drummer and two trumpeters/keyboardists further to the right. With all those ingredients, it could have been musical chaos, but it wasn’t. The music was tightly coordinated, especially the dueling drummers.

Here the violinist jams with one of the three guitarists.

“Hold On, C’mon,” my favorite last time they played here, was my favorite again last night. The song is catchy and fun, almost childish in a Tilly and the Wall way.

While they had two of almost everything, there was only one bass.

And only one violin. Or should I call it a fiddle? They told the audience to square dance during a song that prominently featured his instrument.

I really liked We All Have Hooks for Hands, so I picked up a copy of their new CD, “The Pretender,” which won’t officially be released until April 17. Score! I’ll let you know how it is.

The first headliner, Magnolia Electric Co., was a three-piece tonight. Here is the keyboardist; that mustache is suspiciously pirate-like.

But I’ve never seen a pirate in cowboy boots before.

This is the only picture I have of the drummer, Pete Schreiner. He’s normally on bass, but the regular drummer is on tour with another band. Schreiner used to be the drummer, so he took over again for the first half of this tour. This shot isn’t great, but after I took it (they were still setting up and chatting) Schreiner turned to me and said, “I think I blinked.” As we all see now, he didn’t. Although, being midword, he doesn’t have the cleverest expression. Sorry, buddy.

And finally we come to Jason Molina. He said very little, pausing only between songs to murmur, “Thank you kindly.” I wasn’t aware real people actually said that.

Molina has one of the most interesting voices I’ve ever heard. When I first listened to his previous band, Songs:Ohia, I thought, “Wow, that woman has a weird voice.” But over time I’ve grown to love Molina’s singing.

I’ve always considered Magnolia Electric Co.’s music some of the mellowest I’ve ever heard. It’s dreamy, smoky, blue. But maybe I just didn’t have my stereo turned up loud enough, because last night the music was blasting and the band rocked out. My ears are ringing something fierce.

All this, right outside the kitchen doors at TREA.

The only disappointment was that Magnolia Electric Co. played a painfully short set, only six songs, but with at least two new ones. The keyboardist had a trumpet ready but never used it; apparently the band had a longer set planned.

The Thermals on Sub Pop records were the final act of the night, straight-up hard indie/punk rock. This is Hutch Harris, vocals and guitar.

And this is Kathy Foster, bass. Hutch and Kathy, the core of the band, appeared onstage here before in other incarnations. With the Thermals, they’ve hit it big: In January they performed on Last Call with Carson Daly. Can’t stand Carson Daly, but the Thermals are all right.

Kathy was photogenic. Hutch was not.

And pictures of her got progressively better with each shot, while his grew more toad-like until finally I just put my camera away.

The Thermals includes another guitarist and a drummer, but as I said, Hutch and Kathy are the core. Plus the crowd was pressed too tightly for me to get near the other musicians.

As usual, the person at the door taking people’s money stamped my hand when I paid. I still have a “Thumbs Up!” stamp on my right hand. That sums up this show just about perfectly.

Great local talent, amazing national bands, a bunch of kids out having a good time watching live music: This show is why I love Rapid City’s music scene.