Wordless at the Witney: Times New Viking & ACME – 27/06/08

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Wordless at the Whitney, a series of concerts curated by Wordless Music for the Whitney Museum of American Art noisily ended last Friday with a set by lo-fi favorites Times New Viking and Jefferson Friedman’s third string quartet as performed by members of the American Chamber Music Ensemble. Times New Viking’s latest album, Rip It Off, out on Matador records, has received a lot of recent critical praise for its affecting combination of noise and pop. Jefferson Friedman, a former member of the punk band Shutter to Think, has become a highlight in contemporary classical music. The two were well matched, and not just in the context of Wordless Music’s brief to bring the classical and indie music worlds together. Both halves of the program had a highly developed sense of how to balance two extremes: dense textures and sweet melodies.

For the string quartet half of the program, most of the audience sat on the soon-to-be dance floor in front of the stage. A huge Rauschenberg painting/banner, stretching to the high ceiling, hung behind the players. Severe concrete square pillars surrounded everyone. And to the left of the stage (from the audience perspective), a giant wall of glass let the sun shine in. It felt like story hour in kindergarten, with the music acting as an exuberant, entertaining storyteller (the kind you always liked as a kid).

The quartet, organized into three sections—Introduction, Act, and Epilogue-Lullaby—was good drama, as these names might suggest. Intense chugga chugga rhythms (one can hear Friedman’s connection to the world of punk) cut against moments of stillness in which translucent skeins of sound (usually made by the harmonics on the various instruments) floated onto us. In between, there were moments of lyricism and counterpoint to make any fan of simple or complex art music happy. In other words, the quartet was a performed mix-tape, a playing-out of Friedman’s own listening. And we heard a lot: classic 19th century Romanticism (think Brahms), astringent but haunting dissonance (think Ruth Crawford Seeger), weird quasi-Quakerish melodies, punk, and—on the other side of the time spectrum—the emptied out modal harmonies of pre-tonal Western music.

But in all this mixing, the best parts of the quartet were those times when Friedman figured out some way to make these old-fashioned instruments emit the strangest noises. I had never heard string instruments sound so much like feedback before. Quite striking. Appropriately, I think, the quartet ended by messing with the classical cliché in which the composer drags out the final cadence until the audience bursts with anticipation, only then giving them a deeply satisfying long final chord. Friedman ended with a final short note that screamed for that home ending. Instead, the room filled with background noise: speaker hum (the instruments were mic’d) and audience chatter.

Times New Viking—no slouches in the feedback department themselves—exchanged the subtleties of the string quartet’s contrasts for the enveloping raw power of fuzz and distortion. The first song of their set, also the first song off of Rip It Off, “Teen Drama” started off all lovable and innocent with its loping, catchy riff and steady beat. Then guitarist Jared Phillips stepped on the distortion pedal, and his guitar’s sound transformed from very loud warm overdriven crunch to insanely loud cold jagged crystal. It hit like an ice storm on a diamond sea and instantly transformed the party from happy fun time to something denser, darker, more profound. This is the sound of sound happening. But it wasn’t all distortion zen. Inside of the thick swirls of sound (given bottom and even more density by Beth Murphy’s keyboard), flowed the voices, themselves distorted, warbling away: “…Each summer is the right time for living in sunshine/Quit living your life like you’re nervous…” Two birds in a hurricane joyfully singing.

At one point the hurricane stopped because something broke. What was it? The power supply? The sound system? The amps? Drummer Adam Elliott said, “Do it yourself, kids.” After a few moments of rumor-filled silence, sound returned. Music continued to play. People continued to dance in front of, around, and on the stage. And curious passers-by continued to look down through the glass wall at what must have been a strange but pleasant sight: a basement punk show put on display. Art, life, noise, music: what’s the diff?

Photos courtesy of Chris Owyoung