Midway through Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards' show Tuesday night at Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, she welcomed a familiar face onstage to the delight of the hundreds in attendance.

It wasn't necessarily a surprise: A few folks had already spotted Bon Iver's Justin Vernon in his hooded yellow sweatshirt, commingling in the audience with old friends from his Raleigh days, and it's no secret that Vernon produced Edwards' outstanding new album Voyageur. Devoted fans might also have noticed that videos of the two performing a few songs together at her Sunday night performance in Atlanta had turned up on YouTube in the past couple of days.

What had already been a terrific performance by Edwards was kicked up a notch when Vernon joined in on guitar for the exquisite ballad "Wapusk," released last Fall as a single. Edwards explained it was the first song she and Vernon recorded together, an auspicious collaboration that eventually led to much greater connections both professionally and personally.

Vernon stuck around for another number before leaving Edwards in the hands of her very capable bandmates. Lead guitarist Gord Tough's contributions were muscular but tasteful, and opening act Hannah Georgas added gorgeous harmonies to many songs.

Although Voyageur debuted at No. 39 on the Billboard album charts last week, Edwards' fans responded most enthusiastically to older favorites such as "Six O'Clock News" (from 2002's Failer) and "In State" (from 2005's Back To Me). Near the end of the set, she thanked the crowd for their willingness to also hear the new material, most of which was delivered with bounds of confidence and emotion, particularly the fast-galloping opener "Empty Threat" and the brooding mid-set heartbreaker "Pink Champagne."

Vernon reappeared during the encore to join Edwards on "Mercury," another song from Failer that seems to have played a minor role in bringing the two together. (In a phone interview two weeks ago, Edwards noted that she'd heard Bon Iver had covered "Mercury" onstage before the two singers had met; indeed, YouTube turns up a rendition of the song by Vernon and his band at the Sasquatch Festival near Seattle in May 2009.) They closed with "For The Record," a seven-minute coda to a past relationship which concludes the new album and was stretched out even longer onstage. "I only wanted to sing songs," Edwards attested in the chorus; on this night, that was more than enough, with a little help from her friends.

• Riding in to help: Megafaun

Before last Saturday, I had never heard of a venue selling out twice in one evening. But at Motorco, the first half of the night—a benefit for the Central Park School For Children—opened with a mob of young children and their parents anxiously awaiting the student performances to begin. The joy projected by the student bands, their friends and families was overwhelming. All you could see was smiles everywhere—none more so than with the "adult" instructors, like Phil Cook, Christy Smith, and Heather McEntire, who worked with each student band to develop original material.

After the student performance, the full crowd slowly began to thin and transition to grown-ups attending the event of the evening—The Beast, Mount Moriah and Megafaun. Much like the first half of the show, the second provided a refreshing experience. Between each performance, area high school students in the group Poetic Justice treated the crowd to a number of profound pieces. The Beast, Mount Moriah and Megafaun did not handle this as a standard performance, either. New songs and arrangements debuted, all somehow accompanied by a familial and comforting atmosphere.

Friday night’s performance at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro offered an interesting array of area musicians, centered for an evening around gospel songs. While that might immediately turn off some concertgoers, the songs being played—at least according to Gathering Church Associate Pastor Chris Breslin—were more soul music than anything else.

He was right, too. Jeff Crawford and company worked their way through many of the songs on their new compilation Hymns From The Gathering Church. Throughout the evening, the band switched through countless formations, transitioning smoothly from song to song as though this were a band who had toured on the material previously. Below are several clips from the evening.

Jeff Mangum
w/ Andrew, Laura & Scott
Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill
January 30, 2012

• Illustration by Chris Williams

Photography was not permitted at Jeff Mangum’s show in Chapel Hill on Monday night, increasing the sense that we were about to witness a rare, delicate artifact that could be damaged by bright lights. Yet the person that emerged seemed average, affable and mild, more like someone who had just woken up refreshed after being in suspended animation for 13-odd years than a wild-eyed hermit. He could have easily passed for an art-class extra on My So-Called Life, with lank hair hanging down like Snoopy ears below a puffy engineer cap—a doubly appropriate chapeau for the captain of the time-travel machine that UNC’s Memorial Hall had become.

Indeed, our coordinates were set for the late-’90s, just before Mangum mostly absconded from public and musical life after creating one of the most enduringly beloved indie albums ever, Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Of the roughly 1,400 of us on the voyage, some were 30- or 40-somethings consummating a longtime dream, and maybe reminiscing a bit. Many others were undergraduates, perched on the edges of their seats to see a musician whose last record came out when they were small children.

Released by Merge Records in 1998, Aeroplane was a surreal pop and folk record with lyrics full of cryptic references to Anne Frank and steampunk machines, sung with overwhelming force. The record felt like visiting a burned-down and quite haunted carnival, thanks to Mangum’s affinity for slackened keys, tin-horn harshness, phonograph wobbles—really, all manner of penny-arcade cheapness.

But this uncanny style only partly accounts for Aeroplane’s seemingly permanent status as a holy relic of indie music. It’s accurate but misleading to say that the record appeared at the dawn of the Internet age: in fact, it was the abrupt twilight of hermetic ’90s indie rock. We cherish it as the beautiful last gasp of something bigger than music—a way of life, or of thinking about life. We got to revisit that magically transient moment, when ’90s indie ended two years early, on Monday night. For a little while, it was as if electroclash, dubstep and chillwave had never surfaced.

The evening began with an opening set by Andrew Rieger, Laura Carter and Scott Spillane—all part of the Elephant 6 Recording Company, a label and collective with strong roots in Denver, Athens and antique pop. All were also involved in the creation of Aeroplane, and their set bore ample evidence of the collective quirks that have come to sound Mangum-esque, thanks to his breakout sainthood. There was incredibly loud singing from Spillane, who looked like a trucker Santa Claus. There was pitchy beer-bottle slide guitar by Carter. There were off-kilter, hollowed-out, two-chord grinders, and there was tinker-toy timekeeping.

With a quirky instrumental palette dominated by guitars and horns, the ensemble drew material from their own bands—Elf Power and the Gerbils—and played covers of artists from Chris Knox to Randy Newman (a sour and forbidding “In Germany Before the War”). The Rieger-led Elf Power songs stood out as being R.E.M.-ishly professional among the weird, ramshackle excursions, marking him as the straight man of this merry carny troupe.

Any worries that Mangum’s set would be as loose and meandering were dispelled when he strode onstage, sat down in a ring of acoustic guitars, and ripped into “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2.” The set resembled the one captured on the disc Live at Jittery Joe’s, with fan favorites stripped down to voice and guitar but otherwise rendered with all the memorized nuances. In other words, the set was ideal for an artist who hasn’t meaningfully performed or recorded in so long. Perhaps in acknowledgement of the hefty price of the ticket, Mangum reeled through hit after hit with no filler—“Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone,” all the parts of “King of Carrot Flowers,” “Oh Comely,” “Song Against Sex.” The opening crew returned at intervals to supply iconic horn passages and other signposts, as Mangum traced the vocal contours he engraved in vinyl long age. His voice narrowed to a reedy keen, shot up in a vertiginous howl and drew out notes to Guinness Book-worthy lengths, as though it were a willful beast that, once released from its cage, only goes back in when it’s good and ready.

Mangum’s diction bent under the stress of his singing, vowels changing into other vowels, consonants washing out into groans. His voice pushed against the roof of his mouth as if trying to take his head off. That vibrato-resistant howl sometimes felt a little strange in the formal hall—occasionally, an innocent bystander might have wondered if Mangum was hard of hearing. “I know this is a strange place but you guys can yell at me,” Mangum said, searching for interaction. “It’s not like the punk rock days where you got spit on!” That’s just what happens when indie culture goes to the museum.

But it led me to try and imagine: If I walked into this cold, with no knowledge of Mangum’s legacy and no nostalgic attachment to his records, how would I feel about this guy, all alone onstage at Memorial, beating up a cracked guitar and shouting through his nose? But I couldn’t do it—once Neutral Milk Hotel’s oddities get into you, especially at an impressionable age, there’s no going back.

Spider Bags, Paint Fumes, Flesh Wounds, Brainbows, Snake
Thursday, Jan. 26
La Salamandra, Durham

La Salamandra isn’t designed for hosting rock bands, and it shows. The unassuming taco shack on Hillsborough Rd. features a long, narrow floorplan, divided by an elevated bar and chest-high barricade. The stage, if you want to call it that, is little more than a nook set back into the middle of the room’s length, just large enough for a drummer and some amps and placed so that, last night, most of the crowd would be treated to a side-view of the five performing acts. The sound was problematic, too.

But none of that really hindered the benefit concert organized as a fundraiser to help alleviate the medical bills that local artist Dan Melchior and his wife, Letha Rodman Melchior, have been accruing since Letha’s cancer diagnosis more than a year ago. The show, despite the less-than-ideal setup, roared away.

Plagued by feedback from the PA, and inaudible backing vocals, for instance, Spider Bags started their headlining set at a disadvantage. Still, through the course of it, and especially in their more well-known songs—“Que Viva El Rocanroll,” “Teenage Eyes” and “Dog In The Snow”—the band managed a solid performance.
That handicap was exacerbated by their placement behind a double header of scrappy, relatively new bands. Charlotte’s Paint Fumes slobbered through a half-hour of addictive garage rock, sneaking flashes of 13th Floor Elevators psych-rock and Cramps surf into their set (which ended, naturally, with a busted Silvertone and a cymbal tossed off the drum kit). Flesh Wounds—the Chapel Hill trio of Last Year’s Men’s Montgomery Morris, The Moaners’ Laura King and The Future Kings of Nowhere’s Dan Kinney—offered a set of Oblivians-inspired garage favorably shaded with early-Jawbreaker melodies.

Brainbows’ post-punk rumble and Snake’s fluid twang-jam served as capable openers as the audience, which eventually spilled out onto La Salamandra’s large patio, filled the room. It’s easy—and probably unavoidable—to wonder if the show might’ve been better in a different venue with stage lighting and a better sound system, but that actually misses the point.

Craig Powell—the Durham promoter who often books shows at his nearby house, The Layabout—took the mic between sets to remind the gathered crowd why they were here, and why he’d organized this gig. Dan Melchior Und Das Menace, the band in which Letha Melchior Rodman plays with her husband, played both Powell’s 29th and 30th birthday parties, he said. This was about returning the favor, he said: “It’s the least we can do for them."

Donate to Dan and Letha Melchior at melchiorfund.blogspot.com.

• Photo by D.L. Anderson
• Live and in color: Corrosion of Conformity

Corrosion of Conformity, Hail!Hornet
Sunday, Jan. 22
Orange Peel, Asheville, N.C.

When we parted ways, Corrosion of Conformity drummer Reed Mullin offered an apology for what was, by his estimation, the worst show he’d ever played.

The band had struggled through “The Moneychangers,” a cut from the band’s forthcoming eighth LP. It’s a characteristically complicated song, moving from steamrolling Motörhead speed-metal with Bad Brains-referencing cowbell clomps, into second-wave hardcore stomps and an atmospheric bridge before ending up somewhere near the lumbering doom of COC’s 2005 album In The Arms of God. And Mullin’s missed cue left a visible tension on the stage.

But that soon dissipated as the band raced into the rest of a set list that included plenty of songs from the new album—the ripping, Mullin-sung “Leeches” was a clear standout—1980s favorites such as “Mad World” and “Technocracy,” and even a few nods to the band’s commercial peak with an explosive, crowd-pleasing rendition of 1994’s “Deliverance.”

Leading the band, Mike Dean furrowed his brow and unspooled an endless supply of counterintuitive bass lines as he howled into the microphone, bridging aggression and urgency with melody. Guitarist Woody Weatherman seems to have lost neither the finesse of COC’s metal days nor the chaotic squall of the band’s hardcore beginnings. Sunday night in Asheville, he seemed to channel Tony Iommi and Greg Ginn in equal measure.

The crowd, which half-filled the Orange Peel, made up for its small size with big enthusiasm. Hail!Hornet couldn’t have seemed more excited to open for Corrosion of Conformity. A veritable supergroup of Southern metal bands comprising frontman T-Roy (also of Sourvein), bassist “Dixie” Dave Collins (Buzzov-en, Weedeater), drummer Erik Larson (Alabama Thunderpussy) and guitarist Vince Burke (Beaten Back To Pure), Hail!Hornet delivered a tight set of sludgy death metal that hardly indicated it was only the foursome’s fourth show together.

All of Hail!Hornet’s members are featured in the documentary Slow Southern Steel, which screened before the show. Filled with commentary from members of Eyehategod, Down (including COC’s former frontman Pepper Keenan), Zoroaster, ASG and others, the film focused on a small contingent of heavy bands in the South. Judging by the crowd’s response, it might have understated Corrosion of Conformity’s role in the growth of heavy music in these humid parts.

But COC doesn’t carry the air of idols. And that was particularly true for this performance, which Mike Dean said, with cutting sarcasm, revealed COC’s “human fallibility.” Instead of an encore, Corrosion of Conformity played “The Moneychangers” again. After a false start (yes, another one), they nailed it.

The only ones unsatisfied by Corrosion of Conformity’s performance were the ones in the band. Ultimately, I’ll remember watching Weatherman explore the boundaries of his riffs on “Your Tomorrow” and hearing the audience sing along to “Deliverance,” fists hoisted in the air. Mullin owed me no apology.

click to enlarge

• Photo by Elisabeth Carecchio
• "Les Enfants Terribles"

Les Enfants Terribles
Thursday, Jan. 19–Sunday, Jan. 22
Fletcher Opera Theater, Raleigh

Kill your idols, sure—but what happens when your idol tries to kill you? Perhaps, as in Les Enfants Terribles, you abdicate reality for a dark fantasy world you share with your sister, where mutual cruelty becomes a twisted but biddable kind of love.

Les Enfants Terribles is a fusion of opera and ballet by Philip Glass; the last in a trilogy of such hybrids based on the works of Jean Cocteau. Premiered in 1996, it was staged at Raleigh's Fletcher Opera Theater last week in honor of the composer's 75th birthday, with a French libretto and English narration and supertitles. Drawing talent from the NC Opera and Carolina Ballet, with new choreography and direction by Robert Weiss, the sold-out Sunday matinee was a crowd-pleasing, if muddled, enchantment.

The curtain rises on a snowball fight. Wintry music floats from the three pianos in the pit as fake snow sifts down on children, pelting each other with wooly balls. Paul is injured by a snowball, thrown by his idol Dargelos. More than a snowball, a stone is embedded inside—an apt symbol for the hard, cruel core within the deceptive softness of innocent love. Now Lise must care for both her brother and her ailing mother, whose mouth-gaping death scene is one of the opera's few comical moments. When the mother dies, Paul and Lise are left alone to care for each other in the room they share. Their friend Gérard serves as narrator, witness and Greek chorus.

Cocteau's original novel and film revolve around Paul and Lise's "game," where they torment and manipulate each other with fantasies. Oddly, the game is downplayed in the opera; we catch a few oblique references to it in the libretto, and witness one or two clear instances of it being played, but mostly we learn of it in the program notes. This elision renders the characters' subsequent actions incomprehensible.

After taking a modeling job, Lise meets Agathe, Dargelos' female doppelganger. Just as Dargelos plunged the siblings into their seclusion, Agathe threatens to unravel it, igniting a chain reaction of secret loves, jealousies and missed connections. Here, the game tragically spills over into the real world, culminating with a loaded gun and a gift of poison. Because the game's nature and importance have barely been established, the slapstick coincidences and sudden reversals read more like psychological melodrama than surreal dream-logic. Paul and Lise simply come off as unpleasant, bickering people, and we don't understand what sticks them together.

At Fletcher, the stage was sparely appointed with minimal furniture and projected backdrops, making room for the extra bodies—each character was played by both a singer and a dancer. The latter got the short end of the stick. Beyond some uneasily co-dependent duos, the dancers often just aped the singers, simply doubling rather than multiplying meaning. Rich opportunities for dramatic irony were largely ignored. When all of the pairs were onstage at once, the presentation landed somewhere between experimental anarchy and the clockwork precision of quality ballet. The novel format, however, was compelling.

The music was a constant highlight. For "hypnotically snowy," you'd have to call John Luther Adams to top Philip Glass, who could turn a phone-book recitation into a magical dream-world. Three pianists—one of whom, Wilson Southerland, was also the conductor—provided grinding ostinati and twinkling arpeggios pocked with ominously thundering chords, and I admired the players for finding their entry cues in the lean, repetitive music. The voices occasionally struggled to project over the pianos, but all the principals gave strong performances: baritone Timothy McDevitt, as a vulnerable yet blustery Paul, especially gave me chills at the moments of greatest rapture, though the singer/dancer pair that played Lise (soprano Jessica Cates and Lara O'Brien, respectively) earned the heartiest ovation. The spiraling climax left me breathless, at least, repaying the rough or confusing passages along the way.

Kickin Grass, this is your life: Saturday night in Durham, Kickin Grass celebrated 10 years together in front of a large crowd and in the elegant and recently refurbished Carolina Theatre. That’s a long way from the band’s humble beginnings as a backing band for The Apple Chill Cloggers, though Kickin Grass did a fine job of making their timeline’s ends meet.

The evening served as a reflection on the group’s many miles spent on the road, albums released and members who have come and gone. Many stories were told, from early jam sessions taking place in an old school bus on 13 acres of property in Harnett County to realizing a potential new member was perfect based on an observation related to eating moose tongue.

Oh, there was music, too. Kickin Grass carefully selected songs from each of its three albums, as well as several from an untitled future release. In continuing with the group’s congenial family atmosphere, the band brought back several former members to take place in the celebration. Ben Walters, Kyra Moore and Matt Hooper all sat in with their old friends. What’s more, The Apple Chill Cloggers joined on several numbers as Kickin Grass provided accompaniment, just as they had when the band first began.

Toward the end of the nearly two-hour show, the band took a moment to reflect on a difficult past few years. All members, past and present, joined together in an original gospel number, “The Morning Train.” The pretty hymn was dedicated to the memory of Scott Dawson (the brother of mandolin player Jamie Dawson), plus Jay T. Mullins (father of long-time band supporter Jeff Mullins) and Ristin Cooks (wife of Bassist Patrick Walsh).

The entire show was recorded for a future release, but the band graciously allowed the posting of “The Morning Train” as a dedication to their lost love ones.

• Photo by Jordan Lawrence
• Crooked Fingers' Eric Bachmann, crooning hard

Crooked Fingers, Mount Moriah
Friday, Jan. 6
Kings, Raleigh

Technically, Crooked Fingers Friday night stop at Raleigh’s Kings was not a hometown show. It has been 15 years since leader Eric Bachmann left Chapel Hill and 14 since Archers of Loaf, the now-legendary indie rock outfit he leads once more, ended their initial run. In that time Bachmann has landed in D.C., Seattle, Atlanta, Denver and Taiwan. For the last year, he has resided in Athens, Ga. Still, even if Crooked Fingers don't belong to the Triangle, the rapt crowd at this weekend's show embraced the band like a homegrown treasure.

Crooked Fingers feed on the same barely contained intensity that makes the Archers such an incredible force; in both cases, it springs from Bachmann's mighty presence. By necessity, the Fingers have survived on rotating line-ups, but you wouldn’t know it by the tight, professional ensemble that showed up Friday. They moved easily from post-rock inflected piano ballads and acoustic-led confessionals and to sophisticated art rock with wowing efficiency, laying down a backdrop for Bachmann to leave his mark.

His songs were restrained, but he was not. He attacked his electric guitar during the breaks on tender odes, adding a tasteful but powerful layer of grit. He laid into the mic in tense assaults, instilling tender croons with the vigor of punk-rock shouts. His songs are shaped in the patient vein of acts such as The National and Richard Buckner, but live, Bachmann approaches them with the same unhinged gravitas that defined the Archers. The crowd at Kings seemed acutely aware of this, headbanging to clanging piano chimes.

Bachmann and his band were at their best in the encore. “She Toes the Line,” perhaps the best song on 2011’s LP Breaks in the Armor, became a cataclysmic march with Bachmann shouting his defiant proclamations to the rafters. Best of all was the tender rendition of “Chumming the Ocean” that ended the night. The fearful ode drifted forth on the bittersweet waltz of Bachmann's piano, graced by the brittle but beautiful croon of guitarist Liz Durrett.

Mount Moriah was typically sublime in the opening slot, testing out an adjusted line-up that will accompany them on a month-long U.S. tour. They ripped through an impassioned set that matched Crooked Fingers intensity. Jenks Miller's guitar lines wove their way through the band's lush folk-rock, as Heather McEntire exercised her razor sharp pipes with devastating results.

• Adam David Kissick
• Oneohtrix Point Never performs at The Pour House during Hopscotch 2011.

It may be the mind's function to create patterns out of chaos. And maybe I'm accustomed to chaos, because Hopscotch '11 didn't feel all that chaotic. Still, out of the 135 bands, I believe I caught some patterns in the 29 I saw this past weekend.

I'm sure everyone had a different vision of the event. It's impossible to have seen enough of these bands to have a coherent picture of the entire fest. No one can run that fast. As much as I want to talk about how amazing Andrew Cedermark or Grandchildren were, I think these patterns bear some discussion.