Pylon, Nov. 10, World Café Live
Among the tens of people who showed up for Pylon’s World Café Live gig were some aging hipsters who were lucky enough to catch them at the Hot Club in 1979 – the band’s first show outside Athens, Ga. – but for most of the small but enraptured crowd Saturday night, 1979 may as well have been during the Revolutionary War or Reconstruction. Fact is, many of the spazzy dancers in the crowd would’ve been in grade school when the last of Pylon’s three studio albums went out of print. (I’d admit I was the spazziest dancer in the bunch, but it’s hard to know for sure, what with my hair in my face and my flailing limbs keeping the others at a distance.) The group flatly denied a request for “Yo-yo,” but drummer Curtis Crowe’s technique itself works like a yo-yo. His precise beats are the flick of the wrist that sends you into freefall, suddenly yanks you back to stability and then sends you spinning again. Randy Bewley’s guitar is surfy one minute, tense and wiry the next; Michael Lachowski’s insanely melodic bass is the aural equivalent of a hula hoop, making the world safe for even the most rhythm-challenged amateur hip-shaker. And then there’s Vanessa Briscoe-Hay, who snarls lines like “we eat dub for breakfast” and “spare tire / lugwrench / AM / FM” in a manner that has all the power of screaming but without the volume. No one else howls with such fierce detachment Rumor has it, Pylon’s writing new songs, but you wouldn’t have known it from Saturday’s setlist. They opened the show with a back-to-back “Cool” and “Dub” (the A- and B-side, respectively, of their first single); threw themselves into their dark masterpiece “K,” the desperate love song “Crazy” and a couple other tunes from 1983’s Chomp; and bounced through “Sugarpop,” from their 1990 comeback, Chain. But the night belonged to 1980’s Gyrate. Brought out in expanded form last month by DFA Records, the re-release was all the reason Pylon needed to go on a five-date tour that took them out of Georgia for the first time since their last breakup, 16 years ago. (They returned not only with the immutable four-member lineup intact, but also with longtime roadie Paul Butchart, Athens’ unofficial ambassador, manning the soundboard.) “The Human Body” presented common sense as an epiphany, and the word “pleasant” doesn’t begin to describe the intensity of “Volume.” “Danger” was a workout for Briscoe-Hay’s whistle; the instrumental “Weather Radio” gave her a chance to catch her breath. Lachowski and Bewley used “Feast on My Heart” as an excuse to swap instruments. Between songs, Crowe reminisced about that early show at the Hot Club, where an overflow crowd of Gang of Four fans threatened to riot. Upstairs at World Café Live, a smaller and more forgiving crowd responded to a couple of malfunctioning basses with encouragement and gratitude. Despite a few hang-ups, Pylon’s set worked now, as it evidently did back then, because their riffs are simple, their enthusiasm is genuine and their lock on rhythm is undeniable. Don’t envy the lucky hipsters of 1979. Kick yourself for skipping the show this time around.