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<\/p>\nThe presence of R5 Productions is so solidly baked into Philadelphia’s underground music scene at this point that it becomes easy to take for granted. The company’s independent spirit has offered a guidebook for other local promoters looking to make cool things happen, where a passion for artists they’re excited about and a pursuit of legitimately cool events trumps corporate synergy, profit maximization and show-goer discomfort \/ resentment. They purposely booked the once-feuding Oxes and Arab On Radar on the same bill just to see what happened (if I remember correctly, not much), and they’re probably the reason why I’m shocked when I’m at a venue in some other city and discover that the security team are dicks and there’s no vegan ice cream (or casual BYOB brown-bagging). <\/p>\n
R5 built its rep booking shows in a Unitarian church basement (against all odds, still going strong!), and that zeal for unconventional show spaces has led them to the Harrison Auditorium, a hundred year-old circular stone auditorium on UPenn’s campus. They gazed upward into its elegant coffered dome and thought, “We should get Bill Nace and Grouper in here” – it happened earlier this month! But first, R5 treated us to hotly-tipped Danish singer\/composer ML Buch and eternally-fried North American outfit Excepter on one of this summer’s many flood-watch evenings.<\/p>\n
As we filed in from the spitting rain, it was clear that this was an ML Buch crowd. Walking through ticketing check-in (punks scribbling Sharpies on wrists), there was a secondary, lengthier line of people in the foyer. It took me a second to realize it was simply the ML Buch merch queue, no shortage of fans eager to settle up their purchases prior to the performance. I can’t claim to understand how musicians get popular anymore – like all manners of mid 2020s existence, it has to be algorithmically-assisted, though I’ve come to believe that things can still unfold organically (or at least not nefariously). I know that when I<\/i> first stumbled onto Suntub<\/i> from some semi-old fashioned way (reading about music online), the appeal was instantaneous. ML Buch’s music speaks as much to wildly talented rock \/ folk enchantresses of the ’70s as the digitally-pristine isolation chambers of today, and the crowd bore this out: some elders who spent their young-adulthoods prancing in a pre-internet landscape were peppered in among a majority of twenty-somethings with fresh stick-n-pokes and bachelor’s of arts. <\/p>\n
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Regardless of demographic and prior experience, we were all treated to a rare appearance from Excepter, one of the more inscrutable (and longest-lasting) groups from the outer orbit of Animal Collective’s original social network. Back when Fusetron was the best experimental \/ noise \/ avant-garde email distro around (I guess twenty-plus years ago?), Excepter’s records were deeply idiosyncratic and plentiful. I can’t think of any bands who were making sun-warped, narco-dub space-jams in the same register prior to Excepter’s arrival, but I can certainly think of a few who came after. Their run of activity was hectic in the ’00s and petered out by the middle of the next decade, though records like Debt Dept.<\/i> and Sunbomber<\/i> defy time’s constrictions entirely. Maybe they came out in 2006, or 2036? Now streamlined to the core (and wedded) duo of John Fell Ryan and Lala Harrison Ryan, they bore the lackadaisical confidence of weirdo-synth vets. With Fell Ryan accessorized like Hunter S. Thompson’s stunt-double and Harrison Ryan distributing flowers across the stage’s edge, they moseyed into the first of three lengthy tracks. The two Ryans built neon pyramids of synths, the building blocks of single-note bass throbs, stereo-skittering cymbal-sounds and melodic leads falling into place like Tetris<\/i> at beginner speed. They sounded great (and loud!), working a Moog and a Prophet (my gear specs sadly stop there) like Call Back The Giants on a tropical cruise. Taking turns, Fell Ryan babbled into an old-timey announcer microphone and Harrison Ryan sang like she could see the ghosts in the room; each of their deliveries enhanced the pleasant trance-like state I found myself in. I saw more people taking pics of the venue’s ceiling than of Excepter, which makes sense when you understand that the audience’s eyes were closed for most of their set (third eye excluded). <\/p>\n
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Right at 9:00 PM came ML Buch, in a Ms. Frizzle skirt and a David Byrne jacket. As is the case with her studio recordings, Buch would be performing all of the music herself. A hush quickly fell over the crowd, common when a large audience is excitedly anticipating something for the first time (this being Buch’s first Philadelphia performance). Within the first couple minutes, she flubbed a guitar line and said “Shit, I have to start over” into the mic, a charming emotional icebreaker. (I was reminded of another R5 show more than twenty years ago: Mark Kozelek in the Unitarian Church sanctuary, who used his angelic voice to ask, “Can you turn the lights down? I have all these zits and shit on my face”, long before I had any reason to suspect he was a creep.) With no new music to promote, Buch ran through a number of highlights from Suntub<\/i> and Skinned<\/i>: “Pan Over The Hill”, “Working It Out”, “Can’t Get Over You With You” and “I’m A Girl You Can Hold IRL”. <\/p>\n
Buch was simply fantastic. I was amazed at the crystal clarity of her voice, unmuffled by the limitations of a typical PA system in a large stone room. Is this what Joni Mitchell was like at her peak? As is now typical (and perhaps still a bit unsettling for us old-timers), Buch’s music was frequently pre-programmed, sometimes in minor part and sometimes almost entirely, to include guitars, keys, programmed drums and melodic leads. I have no qualms here – it makes sense in many logistical ways – but it reinforces how truly remarkable it was the first time James Blake rolled through town (2011 – another R5 production of course), performing his electronic music live with Rob McAndrews on guitar and electronics and the astonishing Ben Assiter on MIDI drums. Maybe, like Blake, Buch’s transition from indie-electronic darling to major-label deal with financial tour support isn’t far off. Her guitar-playing was a thrill to witness in person as well, so fluid and expressive and casually dazzling. Her riffs are brooding yet conversational; imagine if Jerry Cantrell released an album of solo guitar compositions for the ECM label in 1992 at the height of his creative powers. <\/p>\n
I can’t believe I’m about to call a forty-minute set “brief”, but that’s certainly how it felt when she announced her last song. Following a standing ovation from the seated crowd, she graced us with a one-song encore, took a few more bows and smiled with the sincerity of someone who truly had a wonderful time playing music for a full, hot crowd on a humid summer evening. If she was happy, we were downright ecstatic. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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