The Post-Rockist

Evangelicals
Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center
September 16, 2008

When I walked into the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center last night, for a second I thought I had mistaken the date and paid $5 to enter a poetry reading instead of an Evangelicals rock show. The place was library-quiet and the few people already there sat studiously huddled on plush, vintage couches throughout the room. I grabbed a seat next to a man reading a Dean Koontz paperback. He had a second book sitting on his lap, presumably a back-up in case he finished the first while waiting for the Norman, Oklahoma band to take what constituted as the stage. I half considered asking him for the other book, just to give me something to take my mind off the overwhelming, awkward silence in the room.

Thankfully, Justin Kinkel and Andy Lashier from the band Theodore were about to start their set. Theodore is a band whose quiet, acoustic music sounds beautiful on record, but I’ve always been a little reluctant to see them live because, well, quiet music doesn’t always lend itself favorably to live bar settings. This was actually a perfect setting for them: folksy and flanneled, the pair sat down on an old, lumpy couch facing us with an owl candle for mood lighting, and started with a cover of Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” accented with a musical saw.

I have to grit my teeth a little at clichés like “intimate, acoustic evening,” but that’s really what it was. And you know what, it was good. Better than good. The songs were mostly ballads in the vein of my current folk hero, Townes Van Zandt, and Lashier managed to pull every trick out of his hat in this short set, playing bango, bowed banjo, musical saw, muted trumpet, and even a little keytar thrown in for good measure. I am definitely planning to catch Theodore the next chance I get. Looks like they’ll even be back at Lemp on October 22nd.

The Heligoats were next. Heligoats is actually one man, Chris Otepka, from Dekalb, Illinois. Yes, he was another acoustic performer, and you’ve probably realized by now that two soft acoustic sets aren’t exactly a natural condiment for the bizarro, Vincent Price psychedelia of the Flaming Lips’ hometown brethren Evangelicals, but Otepka put on a surprisingly endearing set and I have no complaints. Otepka sounded like a K Records version of Jeff Magnum, and I’m pretty sure every girl in the room wanted to take him home, serve him a cup of peppermint tea, and show him their photography.

Man, I’m sounding like a softie. All this talk of feelings and mood lighting and cuddling. I came for Evangelicals! I came for a set of insane rock and roll with screeching songs about amputee ghosts and schizophrenic zombies and skeleton men! How did this happen? Despite the oddness of the billing, I was more concerned with the five-foot Ampeg bass amp set up about four feet from my face. This was going to get real loud real fast.

The last time I saw Evangelicals I was instantly blown away by the theatricality of their performance, and I gave them kudos for bringing their own light show. They brought their lighting effects with them again this time, trading their black light and neon effects for a pair of garish green lights that added to the ghoulishness of their sound, and cranked up the smoke machine for the opening number, “Midnight Vignette.”

Their songs definitely delve into the macabre, but it’s more out of a curious fascination than depressive fixation. You get the sense that singer Josh Jones’ cast of zombies and walking skeletons really just want to find happiness and acceptance, just as his shattered and skewered songs are really just trying to be upbeat pop songs, but are constantly thwarted by their own innate freakishness. In other words, it’s like watching a Tim Burton flick in indie band format (and sitting in the couch in the front row I felt like I was at the Moolah Theatre, minus the booze and the cleanliness).

The set was pulled almost entirely from The Evening Descends, one of the best albums of the year so far, and the man reading Koontz next to me was particularly thrilled to hear “Paperback Suicide” (not a joke). The music was loud and harsh (more a result of the room’s acoustics and my proximity to the amps) and Jones’ vocals were much more piercing than usual, but the band remained remarkably limber, easily shifting the shapelessness of the songs from Roxy glam to New Wave to rockabilly to harrowing squalls of noise and feedback. And like the last time I saw them, they closed with the maniacally thumping “Skeleton Man” and the loud-quiet-loud rush of “Another Day (And Yoor Still Knocked Out)” off 2006’s So Gone.

After the show I picked up a copy of the Evangelicals’ six-song tour EP, which includes covers of Björk’s “You’ve Been Flirting Again” and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You” (the former originally appeared on the Stereogum Björk tribute), plus a really happy, jangly “Halloween Song.” Take a listen below:

Evangelicals - “The Halloween Song”
(from Up All Night EP)

Take a gander at the light switch on the bass guitar. I’m fairly certain it was for decorative purposes only, but with their light show, who knows?