Kinski

Echo - July 15, 2005

Live Review by Adam McKibbin

An odd truth about modern bands living on the fringe is that they have a lot of company.  The shelves of your best local record store are peppered with deconstructionalists, and the avant-garde represented by bands like Sonic Youth has become the old guard.  Maybe the strangest thing to do these days is get a little more normal.  On their newly released Alpine Static, Kinski continue to delve into the brain-bustingly dense terrain of My Bloody Valentine, but also showcase a fondness for good, old-fashioned guitar shredding. 

Their live show, then, kept both old fans and new converts guessing, and—appropriately for one of the first shows on the tour—even the band members themselves seemed a little unsure of what would come next.  Even at their most derivative, Kinski are an ambitious lot, stretching themselves from the slicing, angular guitar rock of “The Wives of Artie Shaw” to the wobbling ambience of “All Your Kids Have Turned to Static.”  Album opener “Hot Stenographer” even busts out a slab of roadhouse blues.  For all of the mention of static, it’s the one thing that seldom happens to the band, on stage or on record.

Abrupt shifts go with the territory—as do extended tuning sessions in between songs—but the one trick that the band overplays is the hush-hush-screech psyche-out.  These intermittent crescendos felt more like an easy attention-getter, whereas their other juxtapositions of discordance against orchestral arrangements felt more organic and of-the-moment.

Chris Martin is the most entertaining of the band members (he’s also the primary songwriter), and he found space even on a small stage to bound around, jump off things, and bang his head.  The Echo crowd was reliably less outwardly responsive, but the satisfied nods and grins in between songs indicated that Alpine Static was hitting the mark.