Live! Welcome To Ashley @ darkroom

June 2nd, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

(Before I launch into another interminable string of superlatives regarding Welcome To Ashley, I need to make a slight correction regarding something we printed last Friday. In our weekly Assault The Weekend! column, I misidentified WTA as the headliners of this particular show at darkroom. In fact, Ladies & Gentlemen were the headliners. I also failed to mention the Viaducts, who played first on the bill, but I’ll have plenty to say about them later. For now, I’d like to publicly apologize to Ladies & Gentlemen for the oversight, and also for missing their set – Third World Timmy had a lot of prepping to do before the Belmont/Sheffield street festival, so we had to jet a little early.)

Anyway: we first experienced the magic of darkroom a couple weeks ago when the Maybenauts played there, and it quickly jumped to the top of the Assault Party Death Squad’s list of fav hangouts. The layout of darkroom is exceedingly cool – a bar in the center of the room, with a stage to the right and some tables where bands can set up merch along the left wall. There are plenty of booths in which to sit and drink $3 cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and the sound is big and edgy without making your ears bleed. It’s a cool place to see a show, and I recommend it.

We were happy to return again, and we got there super early this time. You know how people say it’s cool to be “fashionably late”? Unlearn that. It’s cool to show up forty-five minutes before any other music fans get there. That shows dedication, and the APDSquad is nothing if not dedicated. Proof that it pays to get there first: we witnessed one of the weirdest, craziest, flat-out awesomest bands in Chicago. I speak, of course, of the Viaducts – three dudes on the wrong side of thirty that look they should be working in the Arby’s drive-through, with a sense of style that’s best described as “non-existent.” In a musical landscape where the cool kids generally rule, these guys brought along some dude in a Blackhawks jersey to maniacally chant “Drive-Thru Girl” (the name of the band’s [apparently] most popular song), even after the song had been played. I’m assuming he was somebody’s brother-in-law, and he was the one element of Friday’s show that I found truly lacking. I would’ve been a lot more impressed if he had called out a different song each time, and then the band played that song, creating the illusion that their set list was being randomly dictated by some drunk guy in a Blackhawks jersey.

But, whatever. The Viaducts are great. Part of what makes them great is how cluelessly horrible they are. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s not. I could see these guys becoming a popular hipster favorite around town – they play slowed-down power pop, exchanging pep and pizzazz for grungy chords and drawn-out solos but retaining old-school songwriting fundamentals that make their odes to unrequited love feel both ersatz and essential. I picked up a copy of the group’s demo-quality EP for $3, and while it’s nowhere near as captivating as the band’s live performance, it did only cost $3. Ifyou are lucky enough to catch the Viaducts live, savor every second of the experience – you will not see anything this ridiculous again in a long while, unless you’re planning a weekend trip to your local fantasy zoo, where unicorns frolic with ligers.

Now: Welcome To Ashley. I recently went on record as stating that their new album, Beyond The Pale, is the best straight-up rawk record to be released this year. I stand by that, especially after seeing the songs cranked out live. WTA are commanding and powerful in a very subtle way live – they don’t dance around or spray Faygo at you. They don’t need to. Their songs, particularly those found on Pale and its preceeding EP, Absent Man, are strong in the way that you rarely hear, especially on a Friday night for ten bucks at a dive bar - they’ve absorbed notable mope-rock influences like the Smiths and Joy Division, but those are just weapons in their arsenal. Their main setting is “jangly;” if you like the way that an electric guitar sounds when it is played with finesse and skill, you will enjoy this music. If a devastatingly precise backbeat gets you more excited than some dude with twelve arms creating dissonant tribal rhythms, you will like this music. If the bass lines on Unknown Pleasures turn you on but you wish they were in service of stronger melodies, you will like this music.

And if you like singing, at all, you will like this music. Coley Kennedy is one of the top dude singers right now – he really belts it out, in a voice that’s as deep and rich as whiskey poured from a velvet slipper. I’d say he’s the main attraction, but that’s not to discount his bandmates; watching Pete Javier play guitar was one of the highlights of my week. He’s a pretty suave dude, and the way he effortlessly creates the perfect backdrop for Kennedy’s voice (while finding plenty of time to showcase his own chops – check the slow-motion solos on Beyond the Pale, elastic and stretched to their breaking point for maximum suspense and joy) is exactly what you look for in a real guitar player. And Jeremy Barrett and Sherrlia Bailey do the kind of rock-solid, understated work that often goes unnoticed; they’re not real flashy, but they make this stuff really stick.

The band drew mostly from Beyond The Pale for their setlist, although they dropped in a few older nugs. Most impressive was their ferocity during a run-through of Absent Man‘s “Nothing But Grey Skies Ahead,” and the way the crowd reacted when the first notes were played – it was like being at a Sarah Palin rally, with awesome rock music instead of incredibly weird and creepy redneck rhetoric providing the soundtrack. And my heart popped a boner when the band played “Thursday Afternoon” as an unexpected encore – it’s one of the best tracks on their new album, and the night wouldn’t have felt complete without it.

All in all, I’d say it was a great show. I’m bummed that we missed Ladies and Gentlemen, but I honestly don’t know how much rock ‘n’ roll I could’ve handled – between the Viaducts and Welcome To Ashley, we’d tasted both the sweaty tang of failure and the glorious mouthfeel of a flawless victory. Epic!!!