It didn’t matter there was a leaky roof. The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis played their hybrid freakouts and searing jazz-rock arrangements to a somewhat misty, wet assemblage of duders at Rickshaw Stop a couple of weeks ago, on September 10: dad dudes, masked dudes, musician dudes, bald dudes, hairy dudes, tattooed dudes, happy dudes, funnilyy enough no man-bun dudes, and quizzical-looking dudes (ahem).
I always forget this is the breakdown at math-rock/fusion shows—while I did see a couple of women, I think; either coming or going. Quickly. Listen, I’m not trying to gender out this genre and show; that’d be ick.
It’s just, loaded sax-driven instrumentals, with incandescent stream-of-consciousness odd meters and malleable tempo flows attract a certain fanbase. Yes, that’d be the rock dudes.
A patronage that gave homage to their performers through grunts, howls, and unwavering shaking of spasmodic body parts in the standing-room-only performance by Brendan Canty and Joe Lally (better known as the rhythm section of ‘90s noise-rick icons Fugazi), crunch guitar virtuoso Anthony Pirog, and James Brandon Lewis on sax.
Collectively known as, well, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis, their 75-minute set, primarily featuring songs from their self-titled album released in March, bent brains, made old men swoon like Swifties, and conjured up terrain ideas a la Jeff Parker/Tortoise highlights. As stated by the band at the show, they had a strong DC contingency in the house in support, so maybe these selections went a bit more intense than in previous shows on the West Coast swing.
Soft-loud-soft facemelter “The Time Is The Place” gave equal space to both Lewis on sax and Pirog on guitar as if to ask, who is the soloist in this band? Lewis, with his musical to free-association features, and Pirog just ripping, shredding over the in-the-pocket rhythm section. In other selections such as “Fourth Wall,” the band easily switches their sonic and vibe. It releases a swiftly moving breezy chart that gives, once again, ample space for Lewis and Pirog to improv, find voice, and boulevards of swing, within the structure of an arrangement that feels peak big tour Radiohead-esque.
Which, ha, made dudes smile.
James Brandon Lewis is quickly becoming a generational imposing force on tenor sax, steeped in jazz tradition but also has that garage punk energy and sees the value of mixing it up. With Pirog, and his crunch-lay-it-out guitar play, you have an adventurous group that pushes the limits of where tasty, in-between punk, funk, ska, and skronking charts can go in the 21st Century.
For anyone who claims to be a traditionalist, these four complete all the revisionist ideas around jazz. Over the past 10 years the combo’s delved into bass music, found allegiances in Soundsystem culture from the UK, and so forth. So it’s proper to see this music progress so far that it reverts to the out-tinkerings of Sonny Sharrock, meeting up with where Pharaoh Sanders‘ energy music moved and inspired the non-stop barrage of the senses by Irreversible Entanglements and those peers… Yes, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis time is of the now.
