One part Southern nostalgia, three parts punk energy and two parts genuine showmanship made up the stacked bill of last night’s Legendary Shack Shakers, O’Death and The Red Western show at the 31st Street Pub.
The pub supposes itself as the place in Pittsburgh for cutting edge rock, but is music cutting edge if it smacks of, say, Alabama in the 1930’s? The bands, as well as the 75 people in the crowd, would say yes. And so would I. The music may’ve been more crazed-tent-revival than avant-garde Brooklyn art-punk, and the feverishly energetic assault on the crowd’s bodies and ears did feel a lot like a spiritual reckoning, but there was nothing old or rehashed about the show.
Pittsburgh’s The Red Western opened with some amped up songwriter-country put to a punk beat, and front woman Lauren DeLorenze rocked like a spunkier version of Silver Jew Cassie Berman.
O’Death, Southern macabre enthusiasts from Brooklyn, looked more like a maudlin group of college philosophy majors than a country-revival band, but looks proved deceiving. Lead singer Greg Jamie’s creaking voice (think Isaac Brock singing Johnny Cash) crawled through the songs, exploding in psych-ward hysterics when the music called for it, but never left his calm, almost possessed countenance.
Jamie played the perfect foil for the rest of the band, who played like madmen dancing, stomping and shaking around him like the hurricane to which he was the foreboding eye. O’Death plays music with the same unsettling, jittery quality as, to pull this card twice, Modest Mouse at that band’s most wild and flailing.
The songs are about being lost at sea or buried or dead, all sang over caffeinated funeral dirge music of acoustic guitar, bass, banjo and the occasional ukulele.
And if you’ve never seen someone shred on the ukulele, you’re missing out.
Here's O'Death's sublimely creepy "Low Tide."
The set’s high point was “Down to Rest” — about, you guessed it, burial — which actually got the crowd stomping, and one poor soul attempting a solo mosh pit.
Speaking of souls, O’Death like to air theirs out. The band plays like they’ve got the devil inside them and they want him gone — faces contort, bodies shake and voices quiver. It’s no surprise the music could be the soundtrack to the drunken after party of a Southern gentleman.
That is, the Southern gentleman who shared the bill.
“We’re lucky to be on this tour with the Shack Shakers,” Jamie said. “They’re dicks, though. Really mean people.”
Who says there can’t be humor after the funeral?
The Legendary Shack Shakers’ biggest claim to critical fame has been Jello Biafra’s call that singer J. D. Wilkes is the “last great Rock and Roll frontman.”
Well, maybe not the last, but he’s certainly a leader of a dying breed.
Whereas O’Death could DJ your next funeral, The Shack Shakers could own your county fare. Wilkes dresses like a carney, with giant horn-rimmed glasses (held around his head with an elastic strap) and striped pants. He’s wire thin. His voice, hollered into a 50’s-era microphone, sounds like he should be saying “Step riiiight up!” through a loudspeaker, and he may be downright insane.
Here's a peak at the madness, in a song about "Chicken, chickens and poultry," topics criminally underrepresented in rock:
The Shakers played like they wanted to level 31st Street to its foundation — Mark Robertson’s bass is a standup and thunderously tears across the room and the double-bass drum drilling comes right out of a Slayer song.
But the centerpiece of the show is Wilkes, a front man I’ve never seen the likes of before.
As he stripped much of his clothing off, Wilkes grabbed the audience members and shook them, spit into the crowd (more up-and-over than at anyone) and playfully smacked people in the head. He jumped around, bent in all sorts of athletic ways and often put his fists up, ready to brawl.
But that’s the point — the band’s rockabilly gone insane thrashing is meant to get the crowd moving, moving away from the notion of “I’m in a club in Pittsburgh” and towards “My spirit is being exorcized by the sublime power of Rock’n’roll,” as well as moving physically — for such a small, unpacked club, bodies jumped and stomped and swung around limbs and heads.
The band’s groove was undeniable — thick, syrupy chugging rhythm churning under fast rockabilly guitar and punched-in-the-face bass lines.
The Legendary Shack Shakers play at the altar of Southern gothic. They are the energy you picture in a 1930’s tent revival, with ladies in summer dresses holding fans screaming about the power of the Lord, oh Jesus, please save me.
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