In the lull between songs at U.S. Maple’s concert Saturday at the Abbey Pub came a gratuitous request from the audience: “Play something weird!” Might as well ask Lynyrd Skynyrd to play “Free Bird.” With U.S. Maple, “weird” isn’t a stretch. It’s a calling. The quartet is a fringe-dweller in a rock universe overpopulated by power ballads, recycled ideas and walking cliches in leather pants.
On one level, a U.S. Maple concert can be viewed as subversive comedy, a sendup of arena-rock ritual. Guitarists strike power-chord poses, only to produce the sound of a spider skittering on glass or a trash compactor sputtering on a bag of nails. The singer presses his face against the microphone, as if summoning a massive bellow from the depths of his diaphragm, only to produce a barely audible wheeze. The drummer doesn’t so much hammer away as lurch, flail and stumble with the lopsided gait of a drunk.
Yet there is a logic behind the madness, a refined clarity that may not be instantly apparent, but which turns committed listeners into die-hard fans. Working without a bassist, guitarists Todd Rittman and Mark Shippy create a tangled dialogue of plinks, chimes and whines; they leave oceans of silence between notes, and they build tension by refusing to overplay or to indulge in the predictable chord change. Rittman dances giddily to some unheard flamenco tune as he pecks away at his fret board. Shippy smiles broadly while boldly stepping to the front of the stage, only to let a few notes dribble out anticlimactically. Just as the music appears ready to disintegrate, the guitarists surge back, the mess suddenly made glorious by their unexpected unison.
Al Johnson doesn’t so much sing as talk to himself, his every pronouncement a last gasp in the face of impending collapse. His left leg twitches; his left hand grasps for unseen gremlins buzzing in front of his face; and he claps out the rhythm to a song that some other band is playing in a galaxy far, far away. At times, the quartet appears to be going in four directions at once, with Adam Vida as the wild card. Vida has recently replaced longtime drummer Patrick Samson, and the newcomer’s touch was more heavy-handed and conventional than his predecessor’s. That said, the music retained its air of lopsided menace, the caterwauling inventiveness hinting at a less bluesy Captain Beefheart; the “Dub Housing”-era squall of Pere Ubu; the hushed, queasy soundscapes of Slint, except funnier. Maybe U.S. Maple should cover “Free Bird,” after all.
Openers Cash Audio also reinvigorated the guitar-drums vocabulary, by channeling riff monsters such as Dick Dale, Link Wray and Steve Cropper through their post-punk instrumentals. Guitarist John Humphrey brought the riffs, while drummer Scott Giampino brought the grits, complete with frying skillet on his trap kit.
Here’s a duo that believes that rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t need to be any more complicated than Wray’s “Rumble,” and they played like cold-sweat believers. They were preceded by a brief but well-received set by two-thirds of indie-rock trio Silkworm, which debuted several new tunes in stripped down folk-punk arrangements.
