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Swimming against the current is Lake Trout's specialty. Their brand of shadowy, seductive groove scoffs at category and refuses to imitate. While Trout certainly plucks the fruit of their influences, their music is a concoction all their own, singular and uncanny. This stuff is dark and heavy--serious music that’s subtle and textured like a dream but vivid and sharp like heartbreak. As a fan of the Pixies, Mr. Bungle, and the Velvet Underground, I find that a lot of touring bands are, well, just too damn happy, and it’s refreshing to hear a creative expression of some of the more sinister human emotions.
Lake Trout’s appearance at the Great American Music Hall was overlooked by most of my usually open-minded friends, and I have to admit I felt fine bucking popular opinion and supporting a group that’s successfully flying under the radar. Like Radiohead is to rock ‘n’ roll, Lake Trout is to live electronica, consciously dwelling at the fringes of several scenes and styles at the same time. A lot of the ‘organica’ elements are there—tightly patterned guitars, pounding drum ‘n’ bass, ambient effects—but really this is a band on to something entirely new.
Trout’s one long, two hour set was a sonic kaleidoscope of layers and transitions. The band is composed of five virtuosos, but nobody’s competing for front man status. Vocalist/guitarist Woody Ranere kept his voice so tweaked and concealed by distortion that it was rendered inhuman, half machine half barking animal. Even as he wailed into the mic, his vocals were submerged beneath so much aural backwash that they rarely took over the melody. Multi-instrumentalist Matt Pierce sat behind a Fender Rhodes all night, but was constantly rotating from keys to flute to sax to drum machine. His flute playing was especially noteworthy--ethereal and delicate, wound lightly around the urgent rumble of Lake Trout’s potent rhythm section. Bassist James Griffith and drummer Mike Lowry’s rhythmic swell surged like a tidal wave breaking against Pierce and second guitarist Ed Harris’ hypnotic licks. Lowry had a very strong presence—this is definitely a groove-oriented group, propelled by his explosive breakbeats.
Head spinning shifts of tone and style come easily to Lake Trout: when Ranere’s lyrics were left clean and undistorted, the band easily slid into a more accessible rock/pop vibe; when his or Pierce’s voices were amplified and distorted, they hit a truly formidable jamcore intensity. Overall though, the instrumental numbers were my favorites. Most of these tunes ebbed and flowed, layers rinsing over layers, engaging and up front with kinetic rhythm splashed over a suffused background of controlled melodic feedback. Filtered through ambiguous effects and reverbing like echoes from a darkened tunnel, Lake Trout’s sound cast a concentrated light that shined from within. Watching this process live was mesmerizing, but I couldn’t help thinking how epic it would all sound channeled straight into my brain via a good pair of headphones.
Their one cover of the night was the set closer, an ironic, thrashing version of the Ramone’s ode to emptyheadedness, “I Wanna Be Sedated.” The encore featured a surreal chipmunk-funk tune with a single, repeated lyric: “You know you want it…” Sung by Ranere through a helium-mimicking filter over Pierce’s tin can CasioTone beat, the song was a surreal, tongue-in-cheek indicator of the band’s diversity and sense of humor.
It’s always been my nature to seek out those musical phenomena that most people either overlook or disdain. In my experience—and definitely with these touring bands totally foreign to the world of mass-market radio—it’s their low-pro integrity that keeps such groups original and sincere. Lake Trout is one of these bands—below the underground, swimming upstream, filling a crucial role no other band can.
Jonathan Zwickel
JamBase | Bay Area
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