Booking agencies rarely fly high enough to register on the general public’s radar. So why should anyone beyond their business associates care that Flower Booking, an operation that coordinates the national tours of many local bands, just turned 10 years old? Because their client list has enabled them to throw quite a party, one that began Wednesday and ends Sunday at both the Metro and the Empty Bottle.
Friday night’s concert at the Metro featured three acts associated with the Chicago-based Thrill Jockey label. The Lonesome Organist and Tortoise are both hometown acts that have issued records for the label. Antietam is a New York City-based trio that has worked with Flower since its inception. The misleadingly named Lonesome Organist opened the evening. The one man band may indeed be lonesome, although his joyous demeanor didn’t suggest it. But he certainly did not limit himself to organ; he also played drums, harmonica, vibraphones and guitar, often more than one instrument at a time, and he sang through a distortion unit that intentionally veiled his hammy, mock-operatic vocals in a tinny, transistorized blare.
The Organist indulged in neck-snapping stylistic shifts between wobbly roller-rink strolls, nostalgic keyboard melodies and rudimentary boogie rock. Following the old adage to leave them wanting more, he ended his performance after only half an hour with a vaudevillian turn in which he tap danced whilst beating out a cheery tattoo on steel drums.
Antietam brought the evening back to basics with a ferocious set of mostly new material that showcased Tara Key’s incendiary guitar playing and impassioned, if occasionally imprecise, singing. Key is an exceptionally physical player, slinging her instrument around her body and over her head, but her gyrations weren’t just for show; each movement wrung a different moan, shriek, or roar from her stack of amplifiers. Her playing was as fluent as it was fierce, building song after song to a transcendent climax.
After such a display, Tortoise’s smooth, eclectic instrumental sounds couldn’t help but sound anticlimactic. The quintet recently finished a new album titled “Standards,” which will be issued in February. But Friday they chose not to challenge their audience and stuck to material from their previous release “TNT.”
To their credit, the band did outfit their old tunes with new arrangements that emphasized their increasingly fluid way with a groove. Electric bassist Douglas McCombs’ delicate countermelody lent depth to the drizzle of vibraphone tones on “Ten Day Drizzle,” and electric guitarist Jeffrey Parker played more assertively than he does on record. John McEntire, Dan Bitney and John Herndon switched between bass, keyboards, vibes and drum kits like they were playing a game of musical chairs; and the partisan crowd cheered each exchange as though it were a Herculean feat.
But no amount of adulation could dispel the notion that Tortoise’s set was merely an after-dinner cordial and Antietam was the main dish.
