When one of the most influential and unpredictable bands of the last 40-odd years curates a music festival in this fair city, it’s bound to be an unexpected and exhilarating ride.
British band Wire have made a career out of doing exactly what the hell they’ve wanted to do for over four decades, mutating punk’s DIY aesthetic into challenging fractured art, throwing genre confines to the winds, and inspiring scores of musicians along the way. Hardcore punks, electronic musicians, and indie rockers alike have acknowledged Wire’s impact, so it’s no surprise that the Wire DRILL Seattle Festival roams all over the stylistic map. Curated by the band with assistance from KEXP, DRILL Seattle spans three nights, beginning this evening at Barboza.
Tonight’s headliners Earth began as a two-piece during grunge’s halcyon years, proffering a slow, grinding style of instrumental metal that’s morphed into an atmospheric fusion of goth and blues, all while retaining a sense of down-tempo shuffling menace. Guitarist and sole original member Dylan Carlson is a master of sonic texture (a trait likely not lost on the experimentalists who comprise Wire). Pillar Point, the latest project from Throw Me the Statue frontman Scott Reitherman, occupy the middle slot with a dose of deceptively shimmery and lyrically strong synth pop.
Friday night, DRILL Seattle moves to the Crocodile with a headlining set from Helmet. The New York alt-metal band’s been a longtime ally of Wire (frontman/guitarist Page Hamilton even guested on Wire’s 2008 release, Object 47), and Helmet’s muscular, twisty sound makes them a potent live force. The remaining two acts on the Friday bill offer a study in contrast: Seattle-based pop band By Sunlight takes a luminous, vocally-rich approach to guitar rock, while FF back up their hummable melodies with blasts of punk energy and Sonic Youth-style guitar noise.
Wire play their headlining set on Saturday at Neumo’s. Their new release, Change Becomes Us, finds them refining the blend of abrasiveness and artistry that that’s been their one constant since 1977, and they’ll be playing the album in its entirety. Wire’s always been a compelling onstage act (their live gigs in the early 2000s proved that they could still piledrive with the efficacy of blokes half their age), so hearing them temper that power with their more nuanced material should be pretty damned exciting.
The rest of the night’s acts reflect Wire’s good taste: San Francisco’s Vestals play classic shoegazer pop with swoony earnestness, and Seattle’s wonderful Chastity Belt sound like The Velvet Underground’s Nico fronting a funny, ragged, and hook-laden garage rock band.
There’s plenty of incentive to catch all three nights. In addition to the variety and strong local affiliations of much of the music, admission prices are reasonable ($15 for Thursday, $20 for Friday, and $25 for Wire’s headlining gig Saturday). And as was the case with the London iteration of the DRILL Festival, Wire themselves will show up throughout the fest, in various permutations, to collaborate onstage with other acts. Creativity and unpredictability, it seems, become them as much as change.