If you haven't listened to St. Vincent (lots of videos on that page), and you like A) creative pop music, or B) listening a total Bad-A guitar player blowing up the pop paradigm through deconstructionist arrangements, tones and textures all while holding up actual songwriting (i.e. the tune) supreme, then please give her a listen. She's incredible.
St. Vincent, stage name of Annie Clark, came through Columbus last night with a 4-piece. Herself on vocals and guitar (righteous guitar player), two synth players, and Matt Johnson (of Jeff Buckley's Grace fame, among many others) KILLIN' it on drums.
As you can see from the picture, Matt's set up looked a bit nuts. Two kicks, a main snare, a side snare way to his right, another to his left. Triggers. Two sets of hi hats (one set on top of the other), and one lonely two crash-rides.
I traveled closer to his side of the stage (stage right, people, stage right) for a closer look, and his set up was actually really cool, especially when St. Vincent's sonic landscapes are taken into account. In fact, I became more and more impressed as I realized what he was doing for the tunes throughout the show.
His "main" kit was a 24" kick, I think, and he had it tuned big, low and open, and it sounded so great. The other kick was smaller (22"? 20"?), and he had it tuned really dead and punchy. He played the "aux" kick with the left side of a double-pedal extension which was mounted right next to his "main" kick pedal. In other words, his right foot on the main kick pedal would move to the right a couple inches and be on the aux kick pedal, which lead over to the aux kick beater (a la Dave Weckl's set up in the late 90s when he was doing two kicks).
His main snare was tuned lower and open with a subtle ring to it, and the aux snare to his right was higher and tight. He had a 16" or 18" floor tom between the two kicks.
Basically, he had a wide-open kit on one side and a tight, punchy kit on the other. Same with the stacked hi-hats. One set was crisp, and the other was trashy sounding. And he often used his hi-hats as a crash.
And everything was exquisitely tuned. Just awesome. And he played with finesse and lightness. Didn't bash the guts out of the drums. Great touch.
I never saw what he was using for the trigger "brain," but I presume it was a laptop based on the variety of sounds he was switching through from song-to-song and even section-to-section. Sometimes he was triggering a snare, sometimes electro hi-hats or big fake toms. Other times, he was triggering synths from St. Vincent records, or bleeps and bloops (I'll post a video in a minute with that). It was VERY cool.
And I didn't even realize who he was until towards the end of the show. Great drummer. GREAT show. And probably every guy (and probably girl) in the place ended the night with a little bit of a crush on St. Vincent.
Don't settle for crap music, everyone. Keep it interesting. Keep it deep.
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