Eternal Tapestry and Moon Duo, April 9th at East End

So my friend and I hopped in the car and got down to East End post haste.  We go inside after dodging the heat ruining someones evening and Eternal Tapestry was rocking the house.  It was packed.  Eternal Tapestry was awesome.  Psychedelic swirls, dynamic builds, we only caught a couple of songs, but there is no doubt that Eternal Tapestry may very well end up being one of my favorite bands in town, and I will have to catch them proper for their next show.  They have been getting some buzz lately, and it sounded like they deserved it.

Things cleared out when Eternal Tapestry quit, so we grabbed a seat on the bench in the corner.  That was a good call.  After the switch, Moon Duo started up.  Now I was warned by the other guitarist in my band about Moon Duo, and he said he had seem them recently, and they were pretty cool, but the beat was kept by a drum machine the whole time and washed the vocals were revered out.  I tried to go in with an open mind.  I did really like the trippy keyboard sounds and the guitar tones coming from the Airline Triple Custom, in white.  But yup, every song was based around a drum machine, and a very beep boop, simplistic 80s style drum machine sound.  The vocals were washed out and reverb heavy.

The drum machine thing got old for me.  They would have been awesome with a good drummer on an acoustic kit.  I did notice the guitarist was doing a lot of looping, which is probably a part of the drum machine decision.  Locking loops with the time perfection of a drum machine is a lot less trouble prone that doing it with a live drummer, particularly if there is not a clear beat for the drummer to lock into in the loop, or if the drummer can't hear the loop.  A click in the ear is a possibility, but drum machines don't need to be feed, watered, or get bailed out of jail :).  I guess I see some of the appeal.

It was really cool to be able to catch the two bands I actually wanted to see, even if I missed a good portion of Eternal Tapestries set.  Quite a night for me, two venues, five bands.  The show let out and we made our way down to Potato Champion and feasted on some deep fried taters, covered in pulled pork.  Yum!