Longwave and Scrabbel @ The Rickshaw Stop, 12/11

On The Rickshaw Stop’s website the show was officially billed to start at 8:00. Knowing that one of the three bands, The Eulogies, had cancelled due to illness, I arrived at 9:00, semi-late and trying to balance my strong dislike of arriving anywhere too early with my earnest responsibilities as the concert’s music writer. As it turned out I wasn’t semi-late, I was way too early. The place was nearly empty, and it didn’t begin filling up for a while. Local band Scrabbel took the stage at about 10:00, but still no one showed up until well into their set. The conclusion I’ve drawn is that the vast majority of people were coming only for Longwave, the indie-pop band that has lost considerable ground since its peak of popularity in 2003.
I felt that Scrabbel, a local band who played a great set, was shortchanged. There was a lot of talent there, from bassist Gary Olson to classically trained cellist Hellen Jo (a recent, but already irreplaceable addition to the band). High school friends Dan Lee and Becky Barron (vocals/guitar and vocals/keyboard respectively) founded the band in 1999, and Scrabbel’s played off and on since then with modest success. I for one hope they find a foothold. There was something selfless and tragically optimistic about their music. They played respectfully yet boldly, with each of the five contributing essentially and consistently, but none of them hogging the stage. In a band with not just one, but two clear-cut bandleaders this kind of teamwork is not always a given. Kudos should be given and Scrabbel should get more recognition.

Longwave came on next, and I was a bit disappointed by them. There had been a lot of excited talk by the Longwave fans in the crowd. The NYC-based group hadn’t been to San Francisco in years (a friend of mine had been planning on going to this concert for months). Since the release of their album Strangest Things through RCA Records in 2003 and their flirtation (if not quite association) with real stardom, Longwave has toured close to home, mostly in the North East (but also a successful, yet brief stint in the UK). For a while they were running with the front of the rock pack, often mentioned in the same sentence with the likes of The Strokes and The Flaming Lips, but their next album, There’s a Fire in 2005, failed to reach the same heights. The band has since gone changed drummers and bassists (from drummer Jeremy Greene to Jason Molina, and bassist Dave Marchese to Morgan King) and added the keyboards where Steve Schiltz (vocalist) and Shannon Ferguson (guitar) felt appropriate. Longwave has been playing since 1999, going on 10 years now, and have firmly earned the respect of staying power. But if their performance at The Rickshaw was any indication they may be starting to lack in inspiration.

There wasn’t anything especially interesting about their set. They are a heavily stylized group and are sometimes compared to Radiohead (quite undeservedly in my opinion). There’s a lot of heavy use of electronics, synthesizer and out-there keyboard settings in their music, and at its best this all works together achieving a full, orchestral effect of great atmosphere and creativity. But when this doesn’t work, when the competing noises are more or less at odds with each other, the result is muddy and incomprehensible. That could be what happened on 12/11; it was hard to connect any of the individual players to the sounds that you were hearing. It sounded like too much. The crowd, despite their early anticipatory enthusiasm, looked generally un-excited, a fact not lost on Steve Schiltz, who began making veiled insults and by the end had grown noticeably surly.

After 10 years on the general music scene and six on the national, Longwave could be suffering from a case of second act blues, figuring out where exactly it is they want to go from here. They should take heart in the fact that their Strangest Things fans are still loyally following them, and I’m sure they know that they are in an enviable position compared to bands like their opener Scrabbel. After 10 years they have firmly demonstrated their longevity. Hopefully incomprehensibility isn’t the years’ product.