Friday April 17, 2009, Mercury Lounge: Acid Mothers Temple, Sonic Suicide Squad and Floating Action

We arrived towards the end of Floating Action's set, so we really just got to hear about one and a half songs. The first had a fairly solid simple riff that worked for me. The final song featured a toy piano. It was pretty mellow, but enjoyable. They seemed to have some enthusiastic fans in the audience. Afterwards, before Acid Mothers Temple, some guy who overheard me saying nice things about them felt the need to interject that they were "yacht rock". I didn't really agree with that assessment. Anyway, I've written enough about a band that I heard for all of ten minutes.

Up next were Acid Mothers Temple's touring partners, Sonic Suicide Squad. I was pretty sure I knew what these guys were going to do before I arrived. When I saw that they had a saxophone player and a trumpet player, I had my doubts, but within a minute into their set, it was clear that my first hunch was right. Sonic Suicide were a noise band. My friend Patrick claims her heard a bit of melody in one of their numbers, and I think I remember hearing one bit of structured sound, but for the most part, each piece was a slab of chaotic noise. They used some sampled spoken word bits, but other than that, there was nothing but noise. For some reason, the guitarist had 20 (we counted) pedals, but we couldn't hear any noticeable effects. Maybe they were being swallowed up by the guy on the various electronic equipment.

Anyway, for what it was, I thought it was enjoyable. They couldn't have played more than 30 minutes, and that was probably just right. Anything more, and I might have grown impatient. As it was, it was a nice warm up for the main attraction...

Last time I saw Acid Mothers Temple I was a bit disappointed. Half of the disappointment was seeing a band that I felt was going through the motions. The other half was the bastardized version of La Novia they performed in the middle of their set. This time they didn't even play La Novia. And it was the same lineup of the band that I had seen last year. And with maybe a couple small exceptions, they played the same set (Intro jam, Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky, Slide guitar Jam, Pink Lady Lemonade with Cosmic Death Disco thrown in the middle, Milky Way Star) minus La Novia. But this night was better. They played a quieter version of Dark Stars before playing the full version that worked quite nicely. And I was actually getting into Milky Way Star this time.

It is disappointing to see a band that's capable of releasing as many as eight albums in a year play almost identical sets every time. There have been some changes since the early 2000s when every show included a 30 minute version of La Novia, but Pink Lady Lemonade remains the 30 minute centerpiece of their set. Kawabata Makoto even manages to include it in other Acid Mothers projects at least briefly. While it is a great jam, and the solos he unleashes for the 2nd half are truly stunning, it always comes with ten minutes of repetition beforehand. Sometimes the melody begins to build on itself, but this is never a guaranteed occurence.

But even if their sets evolve slowly, I will keep coming back. Even if they play the same songs, they are always looking for ways to make them more interesting, and no song is ever played the same way twice. But that's not even the point. Beauty never gets old, and watching Kawabata swing his guitar around his head while moving his fingers all over the fretboard is the most beautiful thing one can ever witness at a rock show. And as long as he keeps doing it, I'll be there even if they never change their set, because with all of the bands I have seen, none of them on their best days come close to displaying the perfect beauty of Kawabata Makoto playing guitar.