Crocodiles, Beaten Awake, Dirty Sweet – Beachland Ballroom – June 23

(I’m pretty sure that this should go down as an editor’s note:  Full disclosure:  My good friend Robert and I have been well primed to catch Crocodiles for a good long while; we missed their recent trip to town with Holy Fuck and were righteously disappointed when a March gig at the Grog Shop turned out to be some sort of mis-reported scheduling snafu.  That said, we’ve had June 23 circled on the calendar since the show was announced.  My love for the distortion and feedback-laden, dark subversion of the surf rock idiom that encompasses Summer of Hate is well documented and I was expecting the duo to lay down a righteous set, including most (or all) of that record and some choice tunes that were new to me.  Turns out, dudes only played for thirty minutes.  Honest to god.  Rob and I rolled into the Beachland at nine, rocked out with (new to us) Dirty Sweet, felt the sounds of Beaten Awake wash over us and, as these things go, steeled ourselves for a triumphant set from the headlining act.  You know how we roll here at Citizen Dick.  Our ethos is to say nice shit.  That said, it tests the limits of my self-control when the headlining act plays a shorter set than the opener.  This strikes me as resoundingly counter-intuitive.  Was Crocodiles set awesome?  Yes.  Did it border on the transcendent at times?  Yes.  Was it too short?  Yes. Dudes were absolutely slaying on the pedals and drum machine and blanketing fuzz and overall rockstar vibe.  Then, in a profound anti-climax, they stopped playing music, abruptly and after (maybe) six songs.  Just started packing up their shit and left.  My initial reaction: pretentious, art house, better than me, indie rock put-ons.  That reaction has tempered a bit.  I talked to Crocodile #2 after the set and he seemed really down to earth and okay-as-a-person.  He wasn’t picking up that he shorted me on a show.  To restate: the thirty minutes Crocodiles played was absolutely top-notch.  I was just looking for more than 1800 seconds of music from the band I love and came to see.  That said, the short set was kind of a boon for Rob and me, as it allowed us to travel to neighborhood hideout Pete’s Tavern for libations and miniature bowling (hence the picture above).  A full set would have deprived me of this time with my buddy.  For that, thank you Crocodiles. Look.  It was a solid show and a review attesting to that fact follows, but it would have been infinitely sweeter if I would have stumbled out of the Beachland about thirty minutes later than I did.  It feels good to get that off my chest.  On with the review!)

Opening act Dirty Sweet, natives of San Diego, laid down an earth-scorching opening set.  (Side note: Is it wrong that if I was from San Diego and was in a band, I would totally name it Whale’s Vagina?)  The band pumped out a set packed with classic rock riffs and blues-infused guitar lines.  The frontman was so energetically stomping his feet that I could feel the floorboards shaking with each beat.  They interlaced their muscular sound with some soaring three part harmonies that truly caught the ear.  I was unfamiliar with their work before the show, but from the first song, with a crunching riff straight out of Grand Funk Railroad, complete with a syncopated tambourine bit, I was hooked.  We’ve got a video from Dirty Sweet below (This is a little poppier than the live act, if that makes sense.  On the stage, they’re a shad rawer, which I’d call a good thing); if they’re coming close, they’re well worth the price of admission.  They left absolutely nothing on the table in Cleveland this evening and, in the process, won a few fans.

http://www.vimeo.com/2662287

Kent’s own Beaten Awake followed with a predictably solid set.  We’ve talked about these fellows before in their capacity as openers for Heartless Bastards and not a lot has shifted since then.  Some of the songs leap out of the speakers and, as a listener, I’m dying for the band to grab that sound and push it to its logical conclusion.  The vocals are always top-notch and emotively raw, and the backing sounds are technically astute.  I feel like Beaten Awake are a beat away from putting it all together.  When they do, it’s going to be spectacular.

Crocodiles took the stage to a creepy ethereal glow projected by three floodlights with red shades over the bulbs.  The visual aesthetic matched the sonic one nicely.  I’m writing this nearly four hours after the duo left the stage and my ears are still ringing.  They absolutely brought all of the sonic mayhem and distortion that make Summer of Hate such a delightful record.  I was curious about how they would manage to crank out the sounds present on the album in  a live setting and was impressed by the breadth of sheer noise that they brought to the Beachland.  Dudes were employing a serious drum machine throughout, but the sound wasn’t at all mechanical, strangely.  I think they had the electronics routed through enough boxes and switches that it wound up sounding like an acid-infused Dennis Wilson for the whole set  (It’s nearly impossible to see this band live and not think about Roland from Big Black, although the sounds are wildly different.)  Past the drum machine effects (it sounded like they were pushing out a bass sound as well, but that might have been a different pedal), Crocodiles are clearly adept at manipulating the noise that their instruments produce.  The feedback laced conclusion of “Flash of Light” (which we’ve got below, thanks to the kind people at Olympus) was one of my clear concert highlights of the year.  Crocodiles were sending wave after wave of manipulated fuzzzz (extra “z”s are intentional) and white noise into the ether and it was a joy to soak in.  They played the songs that I would identify as “hits” from Summer of Love, “Soft Skull (In My Room)” and “I Wanna Kill,” both of which translated really well live.  The near sing-a-long nature of “I Wanna Kill” was an obvious high point.  Safdly, Crocodiles blew a fuse a the tail end and rode an unmodified guitar line into the end.  After that, they shut off the lights and started packing up their Byzantine switches.  It speaks to the quality of the show that I was sad to see them go.

“Flash of Light” – Crocodiles – Live at the Beachland – June 23