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Violens &
The Grand Archives
South Street Seaport
Friday August 22, 2008
Written by
Matt Boyd
Photographed by
Amy Davidson
Opposite
Photo:
The Grand Archives
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The impossible never
threatens long in New York City, or at least it
never seems to. In the first blush of the promise
of the month of May we Gothamites never think the
end of August is an achievable goal, we never consider
the final days of summer an immediate danger, something
whose proximity is even worth considering. But as
we sweat and careen under the hot stage lights of
June and July and bathe under the cold beer taps
of Seaport Beer, that August curtain call does still
wait stage autumn, nonetheless. The stage directions
read: Inebriates exeunt. Here we are at the second
to last free Seaport River to River festival show,
and it seems like summer only just got started.
WTF, summer? Stand clear of the closing doors.
Last Friday’s free River to River Festival
show at the South Street Seaport featured NY band
Violens as appetizer and Seattle’s Grand Archives
as main course.
Jorge Elbrecht of Violens
Jorge Elbrecht of Violens
Violens played a flawless set with a familiar feel,
digging back into the well-documented archive of
the past twenty-five years of pop rock. They kept
the rock-o-meter’s needle hovering somewhere
around 90-95 on the British end of the scale. The
playful and active baselines pushed into the crowd’s
face bounced around like the musical undercarriage
on so many endless variations of The Smiths “This
Charming Man,” with guitar work and vocals
evocative of Suede.
Violens’ live-action monster of amalgamated
hit makers isn’t limited to referencing the
style of two Brit-pop acts, however, but also remembers
current acts like Hot Chip and wistful American
wunderkinder the Walkmen. Energetically performed
though their set was, however, breaking through
the crust of likeable accessibility to the hot mantle
of the truly memorable throbbing below the surface
wasn’t an outcome in their cards that night.
You can sound like bands people love without being
bands people love.
Mat Brooke of The Grand
Archives
I don’t know whether the headliners, The
Grand Archive, with members hailing from several
respectable modern rock pedigrees (Carissa’s
Weird and Band of Horses, to name two), did their
best to reminisce on the vocal harmonizing and the
soaring rhythms of Crosby, Stills & Nash, but
they didn’t manage to capture that old-timey
feel or the dead-on vocal overlays of CSN if they
were trying to. They did take me back, though, as
far back as college- that long, upper-middle-class
peace and love fake-out of hippie nostalgia, and
once again I found myself back there questioning
my enrollment in the whole sordid affair. Whoa.
Flashback.
http://www.myspace.com/violensmusic
http://www.myspace.com/grandarchives
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