Dean Spunt summed it up best around midnight at the start of the second performance that day of the Brooklyn stop on Dan Deacon’s latest Round Robin tour, this time with Spunt’s No Age, Bradford Cox’s Deerhunters, and a couple more friends. “Fuck the rain, fuck the sun, fuck it, fuck ’em both.”
Earlier that day, the artists and Jelly staff huddled under tents and in trailers, hoping to wait out thunder and lightning and rainfall that was turning East River Park into a real pool party. After quick decisions to transplant the party down the block to Brooklyn Bowl were solidified, the rain promptly dissipated and a gorgeous Sunday emerged from the clouds for the five hours when the show hypothetically would have gone down.
But for all those who waited hours to get into either showing in the cavernous-but-not-cavernous-enough Bowl, there were full-on seven-man collaborations on Deerhunter’s “Cryptograms” and No Age’s “Sleeper Hold.” With Spunt and Deerhunter drummer Moses Archuleta both on skins, triple guitar attack, and Deacon inserting sputtering noise textures into the mix, the thing was huge. Perhaps too huge to do but for special occasions like birthdays and typhoons, but if you waited all day, these were three of your favorite bands throwing all their disparate tendencies at some of your favorite songs, and you were creaming your pants.
So much so, apparently, that you pissed on the floor. Or so the rumor goes, as people pointed excitedly at a puddle on the ground (beer, you say?), and security dragged someone out during a Deacon song during the 6pm set. Nothing nearly as great at the roomier late set.
In other news, the one-man effects pedal party that is White Rainbow rose to dancehall proportions, confidently filling out the space, with skittering drum sequenced confidently into his ambient textures, and melodies that soared high up into the ceiling fans. Also, Ed Schrader has moved from a standup shtick to blistering tom drumming and throaty chanting, about transvestites in the rain and the like. We like.
