Smarts | Image by City Paper Digi-Cam
may have moved to some nicer, more stable digs recently when it picked up and left its old Davis Street location to settle in the same building that houses Sonar. But the Head still feels very much like its own club and retains much of its backstreet charm and then some, with its own entrance on the side of the building. Walking down the long, dark alley to the door, and hearing the muffled sound of the first band rocking out through the walls, is an almost perfect way to arrive at a show. And it helped that that band,
from Atlanta, were totally rocking the fuck out. A power trio with a completely ripped and insanely talented drummer, Chopper take a path less traveled for heavier rock bands: letting the bass and guitar hold down the repetitive thudding, while the drummer showboats all over the place like a soloist. And may we say, more bands could stand to mix things up like this, especially if they've got a drummer with skills worth letting loose.
The lineup for Thursday night's show seemed to have come together somewhat haphazardly. Of the four bands that played, only two of them, Smarts and Fiasco, were listed on the club's site before the show. And of the other two, Chopper and Hawks, one had a completely different gig in Richmond, Va., listed on its MySpace page for that night. For something that may have been arranged on short notice, however, the bill fit together better than anyone could've planned, with the other acts all following through on the high standard Chopper set at the beginning of the night for loud and rowdy rock with a healthy dose of musicianship.
, another Atlanta band currently on tour with Chopper, added an edge of theatricality to the night by killing most of the room's lights during their set, and playing creepy, obscenity-filled dialogue samples between songs. The quartet's sound came off as a little unimaginative and monotonous after the balls-out grooves Chopper laid down. But Hawks made up for it with the energy of their tattoo-covered lead singer, who crawled on the floor, partially disrobed, and at one point mounted the shoulders of Chopper's bassist, all while hollering and squealing over the band's ungodly racket. In a way, the sleazy schizo vibe of the first couple of bands was only enhanced by the fact that early on in the show, some of the only people in the club were an extremely sketchy group of middle-aged guys with thick Balmer accents who kept violating the "only one at a time" rule posted on the club's bathroom door, for reasons that we really don't want to know.
The last two bands skewed much closer to indie and hardcore than the southern metal of the preceding acts, but kept the heaviness quotient high. New York's
were one of those bands who seemed to operate on a level of communication between its three members that almost resembled telepathy, skipping through blisteringly complex riffs and song structures and 32nd-note bass lines. And when the guitarist and drummer swapped instruments for one song, it turned out they were an equally tight unit in that configuration.
The one local band at the show,
, were a good choice to close out the night, and having recently performed at Whartscape they seemed to bring a nice little following out to the Talking Head. Unfortunately, the fans that crowded around the band on the club's floor were total knuckleheads, getting more obnoxious and physically imposing with every song, until they were throwing around furniture, punching the air conditioning vent on the ceiling, and rough housing with members of the band, who seemed to appreciate the frenzy at times, and discourage it at others. Smarts kind of put the energy of hardcore punk through a fun-house mirror, with goofy, wide-eyed vocals, skronky bass, flailing drums, and no guitarist, but the vibe of their set went all the way to dumb-ass hardcore show cliché. The band began to signal that they'd play three more songs right before the bassist's instrument broke in two, and the whole place briefly fell into chaos when it looked like the set might be prematurely over. But then he got out another bass, and they carried on, with the last songs, while the chaos continued to intensify. The Talking Head's soundman is set up right in the middle of the room near the stage in the new location, and we felt genuine sympathy for the guy as Smarts fans jostled around him and the band's frontman sprayed a bottle of water all over the club, spilling some on the mixing board. Maybe the club will think about building the poor guy a booth before the next time it books Smarts.
