Tuesday, February 9, 1999
Avalanche of music
Sno-core tour
By Brent Hopkins
Daily Bruin Staff
On Saturday night, when the Palladium’s side doors cracked open,
fresh air spilled in like a cool wave. Fans stumbled outside,
disoriented, staggering, yelling to be heard. Intelligible
conversation was a distant memory, and a distinct ringing sound was
all that could be made out through the fog of noise. Sno-Core had
left its mark.
Though DJ Spooky and Redman had also shared the stage that
evening, after Soul Coughing and Everclear had bruised eardrums
with a vengeance for the final two and a half hours, they were hard
to remember. Bringing volume to a new artistic level, the two
alternative acts worked the crowd over with a gigantic sonic fist,
shaking the speakers, shaking the ground, shaking the fans, and
shaking just about anything else not bolted down inside the
Palladium’s spacious confines. It might have hurt a little, but the
sting was muted by a vague memory of some pretty good music.
The four members of Soul Coughing didn’t seem to fit together,
but they somehow managed to string their wildly disparate elements
to make a tasty show. Yuval Gabay’s drumming was quick and intense,
sounding like it had been lifted from a sequencer. When blended
with Sebastian Steinberg’s jazz-like upright bass, the effect was
an odd, electronic-like sound that set the crowd to dancing.
The only thing getting in the way of transforming the Palladium
into a huge rave was the deafening volume, which was so
overpowering that most fans were left to simply wobble in awe. Some
of the lighter material, such as the airy "Circles" broke through
the haze, but Soul Coughing’s main intent seemed to be to pummel
listeners. As "Super Bon Bon’s" last notes echoed away, the
audience seemed numb, but satisfied.
The tear-down between Soul Coughing and Everclear was remarkably
quick, not letting the energy fade away before the alterna-punk
trio dashed onstage. Augmented by a second drummer, keyboard player
and guitarist, the band looked like it was about to perform a
lavish ’70s super-rock show. These notions were immediately
dispelled, however, when they launched into "El Distorto de
Melodica," a snarling, smashing guitar-driven rawker. The dual
drumming was especially powerful, magnifying each beat to provide
an especially solid foundation.
This was not the radio-friendly Everclear whose music has been
increasingly permeating lite-rock stations as of late. No, this was
the angry sounding Everclear that approached every song with
energetic gusto, ignoring the feedback and putting the pedal to the
floor all night long.
"We can play as loud as we want to in here tonight," bassist
Craig Montoya growled between songs.
And they did, not toning it down for the rest of the evening.
The crowd, mostly high school kids, but with a healthy sprinkling
of older fans, as well, didn’t seem to mind. When the band offered
some older material from their "Sparkle and Fade" album, people
began to jump like bacon on a hot stove, pulsing right along with
the music. This sent the yellow-jacketed security guards into a
nervous frenzy, as they tried unsuccessfully to pull down floaters
and break up mosh pits.
The sound quality wasn’t spectacular, but it didn’t matter too
much. Guitars washed over each other like explosive gas, singer Art
Alexakis bellowed like a man possessed and the drums crashed over
the whole turbulent mix. The carefully engineered album tunes were
deconstructed into the raw elements of rock. Even when they tried
to return a bit of melody to the songs, like a new keyboard-line to
"Santa Monica," or the choir-like vocals on "So Much For the
Afterglow," the sound would swirl together in a cacaphonous rush.
The result wasn’t unpleasant, it was just completely different from
the album cuts of the songs.
When the band made its way offstage at 11:30, energy was still
high. Their closing was equally as potent as their opener, and fans
jumped just as hard as they had when the evening began. The
audience members may not have been able to hear anything the next
day, but at least they took home some good memories to comfort them
in their deafness.Photos by GENEVIEVE LIANG/Daily Bruin Senior
Staff
Art Alexakis hyped up the Palladium crowd with hits from
Everclear’s past albums.
GENEVIEVE LIANG/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
A younger crowd filled the halls of the Hollywood Palladium for
the Sno-Core show Saturday night.
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