Black Midi at Unit, September 5th 2019

I recently finished watching the documentary series Rolling Stone: Stories From The Edge and was reminded of the famous quote from Jon Landau about his reaction when he first saw Bruce Springsteen in concert. “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen”. What’s funny is that even at that time -early seventies- The Boss sound was rooted in tradition to the point that it was a throwback to the sixties and fifties. That’s not saying he wasn’t innovative, but if Landau would have said the same thing after seeing Kraftwerk or Kool Herc it would have been maybe more accurate.

In a similar vein Black Midi has been hyped as the “saviors of guitar based rock”. Their reinterpretation of the post-punk sound has been critically acclaimed, their debut album has received nothing but rave reviews across the board. I was curious to see them and got a ticket about a month prior to their Japan debut show, just before it sold out.

On my way to the venue I saw the band posing for pictures at one random corner and they looked very different from the gloomy, humorless, focused and serious group of people I saw in the now famous Live on KEXP video. They looked more like the regular group of tourists amazed by the neon signs in kanji and katakana. I took that as a good omen because if there was one thing a bit off-putting about their music was what I perceived as a solemn approach from the band. 

Got at the venue about 15 minutes before starting time and squeezed my way to the front (Don’t know why people would just pack the back of the venue when there’s usually plenty of space up front, same thing happens next to the doors on commuter trains). The opening band was a hip hop group, Dos Monos. The rapping flow was a constant 1,2,3,4.1,2,3,4.1,2,3,4.1 uttered at the top of their lungs, similar to what you see on those rap battle shows on TV here in Japan late at night. The beats and visuals were very unconventional and attention grabbing. The last three numbers, got to admit, were quite hard and funky. Overall it was a fun opening set, I hope that in the future they add a bit more subtlety to their delivery.

25 minutes afterwards Black Midi came on stage and took a similar pummeling approach. It might be because I’m coming from a perspective of someone who’s in his forties, but all that relentless aggression from these bands seemed a bit naive and monotonous. Maybe I’m not the target. I did admire the guitar sound that reminded me of Discipline era King Crimson, or the Pere Ubu sounding vocals, but the first half of their set felt like they were trying to cram as many notes as possible, employing odd time signatures and awkward breaks. Except for the note cramming part those are all great ideas, but it was the lack of dynamics that rendered some of the improvisation somewhat dull and lifeless.
  
Things took off by the time they played Near Detroit, Michigan -what a great idea to write a song about the Flint water crisis quoting the water lines from Once in a Lifetime. From then on their set reached the peaks I wished they would have reached earlier, closing with bmbmbm, probably their current better known song.

They played for about an hour and twenty minutes without an encore and never once addressed the audience. Nonetheless the sense of humor that seemed to be missing in videos I saw, was there. Spastic dance moves and pantomime comedy were part of the delivery that included high musicianship skills from each of the band members. 

The show was an enjoyable one and I’m curious to see where they will take their sound next. Going back to Landau, if Springsteen paid tribute to Motown and the early rock and rollers when he first started, Black Midi is currently definitely inspired by the post-punk of the seventies and eighties. Going back even further and thinking more in an analogy, I think a smart move for their next record will be a transition like the one the Velvet Underground did from White Light / White Heat to their self-titled third album. They could benefit -and the same goes to Dos Monos- from a switch from total abrasiveness to mild abrasiveness as a way of adding more colors to their palette.

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