CMJ for Dummies

If you’re one of those people who is never satisfied with the musical status quo, or is easily bored with the 1,000 plus songs on your MP3 player then you were probably in attendance at this past week’s CMJ Music and Film Festival. CMJ or College Music Journal hosted its 29th annual festival featuring over 1,300 bands in venues across Brooklyn and Manhattan. Running from Tuesday to the early hours of Sunday morning it showcased new and up-and-coming talent in the world of non-commercial music. CMJ includes everything from music and film showcases to panels featuring leading figures in the music industry and brings together professionals, flannel clad hipsters and general concertgoers alike.

With an overwhelming amount to see and hear, here’s a wrap-up of some of the most talked about and some still yet to be discovered bands. Did they live up to the hype? Who is the next big thing that’s going to take Brooklyn’s indie rock scene by storm?

Baby faced Brooklyn trio The Antlers kicked off the festival Tuesday night at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. With a mix of heavy guitar, delicate keyboards and a subtle rush of drums, their sound is sweet, yet epic in scale. The Antlers played songs of their debut album Hospice sounding off sustained chords that build and crescendo until they flood the dam and pour out in emotional, sweeping melodies. Lead singer Pete Silberman’s high-pitched airy falsetto warbles over powerful instrumentation on songs that don’t end until the last of the bit of feedback fades out . . . and you don’t want them to.

Playing on the same bill was Fanfarlo, a baroque pop collective hailing from London, England, but you would never guess it. Dressed in worn leather shoes, vests, suspenders and bow ties the band looked like a still out of a Dorothea Lange depression era photo. The music also spoke to a bygone American sensibility with jangling, twangy melodies fully orchestrated with violin, xylophone, heralding trumpets and even the bowed saw. But the band does have modern corollaries, as lead singer Simon Balthazar’s matured voice draws comparisons with Win Butler of Arcade Fire and the band’s four part harmonies could rival those of nouveau folkies Fleet Foxes. Fanfarlo’s euphony of sound is so down-home that we might as well claim them as our own.

Local Williamsburg band The Wild Yaks performed a raucous set Wednesday night at the Knitting Factory as part of the Ernest Jenning Showcase. The all male collective bellowed in unison releasing a machismo roar that was a mix between a drunken night of bar songs and the testosterone of a war call. The songs have all the fury of punk rock played with blues rhythms and wicked shredding guitar riffs worthy of Jimmy Page. The Wild Yaks live up to their name expressing so much raw uninhibited energy onstage that the Dionysian release in their music demands nothing less than their all. They leave it all on stage, literally, because by the end of the set lead singer Rob Bryn lost his voice.

Thursday night two-man band Japandroids played at Glasslands, but what they lack in numbers they make up for in volume. The duo delivered straight-up rock that comes at you hard and fast with Brian King firing off lightning guitar riffs and David Prowse banging on the drums with the vigor of an impetuous 5-year-old. King stood in front of a fan that blew his hair back like he was Mariah Carey, belting out tunes that harnessed the energy of 1990’s grunge bands like The Offspring and Alice in Chains. Asking the audience to sing-along King said, “All of our songs are so easy you can get them in like thirty seconds. You’ll know it in a minute,” and the music does stick with you, if not the repetitive chords and lyrics than your hearing loss.

Remember those kids you knew in high school? The one’s who only dressed in black, had hair with feelings and worshiped the Cure’s Robert Smith as evidenced by their heavy eye make-up and bright red lipstick? Well those kids formed a band called The xx who played Friday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg. There is darkness in their music that resonates in the space between the child-like female vocals and their ghostly male counterpart that slices through the simplistic guitar melodies like a razor. Played over danceable beats the bass lines are so powerful and loud that you could feel them in your bones. Standing engulfed in the noise was like having a plane take off in your cochlea, going deaf with only the keyboard notes penetrating through the blackness. It was unsettling, if not unpleasant. Throughout the set two ghostly illuminated x’s shone from the dimly lit stage like beacons to guide you out of this otherworldly nightmarish soundscape.

Headlining the same show was School of Seven Bells, fronted by twins Alejandra and Claudia Dehez and guitarist Benjamin Curtis who played fuzzed out rock that hung in a delicate balance with the siren female vocals. Over Curtis’s reverb heavy guitar the Dehez sister’s fragile voices sang in harmony. The two extremities in sound separate out like oil and water, the thickness of the music resting easily on top of the fine vocals. Looming over the stage and just as hazy as the electronically altered instrument riffs were projected images of the band playing in real time. The footage looked old and remote with its edges worn as if by acid, reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s early avant-garde visual collaborations with The Velvet Underground. Similarly School of Seven Bells music is an art piece, with different mediums and textures splattered across the canvas hanging in a precarious but aesthetically pleasing balance.

With a diverse assortment of sounds like a never ending Viennese table CMJ has a lot to offer, and those bands mentioned here are just scratching the surface. Even for the most diehard music fans a full week of concerts is exhausting, but with this years endless set list is finished, you have 358 days to rest up for next year.