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Belying the shoddy, squalid streets of North Beach, Broadway Studios teeters between ritzy and sleazy, Studio 54 and goth-rock. The stage is trapezoidal, angled back to the drummer's space and a creepy old piano that could've been played in Nosferatu. To the right, stacks of maroon lights circumscribed by circles within squares. A long movie screen sits blank above an abandoned bar in the corner. Giant birdcages with musical notes dangling off the bottom hang from the rafters as if begging for Motley Crue to play there. Below, the dance floor is enormous, shellacked like the dining rooms of Minnesota, capable of waltzes, lined by enormous booths complete with a single candle in a maroon vase.
Familiar sounds begin. The loud din of bass drum thuds, complimented by a slow snare, the awkward rhythm of a bolt of distant lightning erupting with the most primal thunder. Elastic, pumping slaps from Mark Schuh, the bass curling under the thunder like landscape of molten stone. Adam Perry maneuvers slow into the higher tones, lurching through lower resonances until discovering his high hats, which he taps gingerly at first, then loses timidity for momentum and shuffles over, crashing around underneath but releasing a neurotic sense of the euphoria onto an increasingly more attentive audience. Mark maneuvers into this new territory, carving long, snaking rivers into his landscape of stone, at times receding from the rough waves for tiny, important sounds, painting tiny shrubs, his own eruptions like geysers jutting forth in dark lands. Emily Pitcher's Gibson SG arrives with the voice of distant, bare chords, the cherub unfamiliar with this hellish new place, timid though completely appreciative, exhaling her increasing awareness of vastness with her voice of mirrors.
Out of this space, over the horizon arises Noah Reid's guitar, the distant flapping of some enormous, predatory bird. His slow eyes survey the land, chirping out his praises and disgusts, plunging in deeper and deeper, wings fluttering more furiously, the chirping becoming more momentous until it is spliced with huge squawking chords, the call of destruction... From here the band pulses even louder, faster, Mark, Adam and Emily each bringing their themes to their breaking point, tremulous, harder, rocks vibrating under 70 mph winds... And the bird passes through, Shivic arms of fire spouting everywhere, plunging the landscape of neurotic darkness into an enormous ring of fire, Noah playing in furious ecstasy over the high ends of his Telecaster, slipping sideways through canyons and rising to breathe fire into Adam's cymbal clouds.
As the voices attain their breaking point, all at the peak of vibrations, ready to re-dissipate into nothingness and silence, in drifts the silky, melodious flute of Jason "Hawk" West. Like the Dove incoming, singing her lovely song over all creation, acknowledging the beauteous and the bizarre, the light and the darkness, so too does Hawk's emergence indicate the end of this new explored territory and it's functioning, of the momentary beauty, but acknowledging the new creation to come... He drifts through, soft as feathers over landscapes locked in fire, laughing, admiring, finally curling his voice into the opening themes of "Down in the Basement," which the furious voices become slowly aware of, break off, plow through the transition space and finally arrive at the old favorite. And this band has only been together six months.
"Down the Basement" ends, finds some space, settles into the opening bass climbs of "Knot." As Mark funks in, Noah drifts around, distorts, shuffles space, vibrates, finally discovering the opening chords. Adam establishes tempo, a precise but simple beat that leads Emily into her Velcro chords, the final statements of everything happening around her that creates the ideal footing for her vocals.
The bouncy, at-times straightforward introduction belies the jarring spaciness of the tune, a simple snare-and-splash slam at the end of the phrase indicating something much heavier. While Emily croons "Whores are moaning and I need to/feel your touch right now," Noah spaces out--these sharp, tense, distant phrases create great tension behind this touchy rhythm; Emily maintains a sense of jazz drama, the beautiful, distinctly stated vocals swooping into the chorus. "See it in my own eyes/where was I when the numb was feeling/on this occasion," a signal to the band who fortes, huge crunching riffs, compacting the space beneath her. The build of energy is followed by a release into the second verse, now impregnated with a sensational amount of tension. Beneath the expression of the conflicts underlying instinct and attraction, adoration and consciousness, the band has carried in the chorus energy to a tension point where something violent must inevitably happen. They return to the chorus: this time the crunching of time is simply not enough to contain the precipitous approach of madness.
Reaching the end of the second chorus, a beat of silence is left, looking forward into whatever disruptions might arise. Hawk climbs in, trembling, a new voice into this chaos bubbling, abandoning his fear, then darting into a flurry of confused impressions floating over hard, shifting time which, magically, retains a danceable sense of rhythm. The flute here really defines something uniquely special about Sunfire Pleasure: where other bands, at a point of tension, would be forced to allow the lead guitar to ring or screech, they can bring in this new, ethereal sound which can bring voice to the most scattered sense of consciousness.
After Hawk navigates the overfill of dramatic energy, the rhythm section relaxes, dissipates, still vibrating but rediscovering their vibration-bodies in slower space. Noah defines this place, his shifting moans sounding like the screams of confusion when you're too confused to scream. From there he hears Adam, who has shifted from his simple beat to plunge all over his kit, an angrier sense of pounding, which indicates some new truth to the space-moans; it's okay to bring voice to the confusion stimulating the moan. Noah begins to screech, wail, bend his strings to uncomfortable spaces but, through these cathartic expressions, is capable of resurrecting the melody abandoned during the climax point. Beneath this Mark keeps steady, ascending rhythms, the body in which all these impressions are housed.
The band rebinds into the verse/chorus structure, seemingly more fresh, but actually more wise: they can now navigate this territory with freshness because it has been comprehended. They plow through the verse and chorus, skip back to the refrain momentarily, exhibiting the dominance of understanding over repeated experience, and slowly bring it to an end.
From my vantage point on the balcony, I see many heads turn. Amidst the flutter of a whole floor clapping, refugee voices can be made out, "Who are these guys again?" "Where have they played before?" An audience who had sat a bit stunned at their tables moved even closer to the dance floor. Now nearly everyone faces the stage, an incredible accomplishment for a band playing only their fourth show together.
After a rousing "Lordy, Hey," they pause, reflect, and dive into "Breathe Through the Error," a brand new, almost progressive-rock tune that travels for ten minutes or more before jamming into "Navigation's Critical," a slinking, reggae-tinged mindbender that somehow juxtaposes Mazzy Star with the Grateful Dead's "Estimated Prophet." Within this three song package, Sunfire Pleasure's range of precision and Darwinian sense of adaptation become apparent: Mark and Adam send messages in rhythm, making combustible transitions from Pixie's-style indie-rock to neurotic Clash-esque funk reminiscent of "The Magnificent Seven," orchestrating the vibrations of the hall like shamans. Within the admixture of musical styles, one underlying truth becomes apparent: the conflicted nature of inner awareness. When things like melody and sustained composition triumph over the humanity of an art, when the artist allows the desire for uniform beauty to obscure the dynamic, fragmented, at times violently conflicted nature of consciousness, then the humanity of the music is lost. In Sunfire Pleasure there is no attempt to make concessions to joy or euphoria for any period of time than it be human, all too human--even in the song structures themselves. While they may be able to benefit from not ripping themselves from a particular theme too quickly, to jam and explore an altered state from bottom to top, it is a far better embryonic state to be willing to follow the schismatic essence of being than to cling to the fabricated sense of joy and, in the words of a fan, "become another fucking Dave Matthews [Band] or String Cheese [Incident]."
As the pressure builds onstage I move down below, the floor itself now an ocean of energy. The entire crowd is caught up in the tides, swishing onto the dance floor, completely abuzz with that sense of a new thing so strangely, dizzyingly powerful they aren't sure how to respond, but can only spiritually adapt to this new, important space. The green lights shine down, capturing this moment but no longer providing any sense of light: the energy, the illumination is radiant in itself. I look back to the bar where, at this break between songs, only one single face is turned from the stage, and his hand is outstretched for a drink. Otherwise, the house is still.
Familiar chords resound. Those neurotic, pulsing, schismatic chords, the bass pumping sexual and vicious. Anonymous "Yes's!" erupt from the crowd, heads bobbing everywhere to the familiar Byrne-penned "Memories Can't Wait" prelude. Adam has his head down now, tapping out his rhythm with eyes bowed reverently. Mark appears possessed, eyes half blinded to the world like he's channeling the energy of a thousand coked-up demons into four fingers pounding. Noah thrashes intent, sparse, carving minimalistic phrasings like some crazy haikus... But the focus is Emily, stomping into the first verse, sharp hands slicing through hot air like karate chops. Each line is conveyed by her dramatically but without pomp, delivered to the full effect, the band able to capture this intense journey to the brink of the energy and return sharp and invigorated. At the arrival of the chorus Emily pounds the air with one hand, gripping ferociously at the mike with the other, bathed in green light. She looks dizzy; as she belts out "Other people can go home/other people they can split/I'll be here all the time/I can never quit," all eyes are rapt--an old sermon is breathed new life.
The second verse cues. The band, the audience, the hall, is blistering.
Her eyes have become entirely glossy, jutting out from mascara'd eyelids with mad intensity. Her hands indicate verbs like a magic spell. Behind, the band is captured in this magnetic storm, swirling, each in pure communication with each other without so much as their heads up. Then Emily extends her arms, punching out to the sides, back arched slight enough, growing a foot taller and bellows:
"It isn't what you hoped for, is it?!"
A tsunami juts forth from the stage and, at this moment and no other, it becomes apparent that the crucial has occurred. I have seen Sunfire Pleasure three times, and they've been incredible, but this was something new entirely. Judging by gapes, screams, yelps, glossy eyes, and spilled drinks, this was a magic moment. Mythological language, ideas of possession, metaphysical jargon, however esoteric, even complicated metaphors no longer contained the band. We saw the essence of music and the essence of communication: human beings creating rhythm and concept, exuberant, expressing themselves to the fullest potentiality and leaving an audience rapt in the recognition. We saw that Emily singing, Adam pounding, Mark slapping, Noah strumming, and Hawk soaring were, in their simple incarnation, infinitely more powerful than all imagination. Broadway Studios became a universe unto itself, one of telepathic communication.
Sunfire carried through to the end of the song on the same high, riding it into "Baggage," their own tune, their most Pixies-esque, and one of great power itself, but at this point we needed to come down. Had they ended with the climax and not concluded with this beautiful falling action, we might've been left speaking in tongues, a tribe abandoned by their medicine men at the peak of their peyote visitation. I bobbed my head, jotting down furious refractions of unintelligible being into my pocket notebook as the music stopped, the audience gasping momentarily before pouring applause onstage in joyous befuddlement.
I took advantage of the stupor and wandered back, got another beer, and clunked upstairs to gather. Down below everyone was chatting again, dazed, many discussing the band but most returning to their small talk and dreams of new bedposts. Everyone was signing up for the mailing list now, grabbing a condom or a sour apple sucker from the wooden bowl, shaking hands with the band as they came down from the stage, and it became apparent that this was not uncomfortable. Beyond the untamable rhythmic union, the incisive and poetic lyrics, beyond the hallucinogenic guitar explorations and immaculate flute phrasings is a deep, troubled soul willing to explore all the tragedies and fuck-ups without shame. When so much music is deliberately over-ironical, unnecessarily giddy, or just geared towards superficial enjoyment, Sunfire Pleasure provides gravity, honesty, and deep exhilaration. Even now they show hints of that band thousands can get found in, trading tapes of shows and experiencing new ways of life.
I took the last sips of my beer and stepped out into the blustery boulevards of North Beach, walking Kerouac's streets again, now with new eyes, having experienced the center of the Saturday night. For those of us who moved to San Francisco, hung over from the Beat history, the Dead history, or the punk resurgence to arrive in a peninsula barren of another movement, Sunfire Pleasure is a familiar, necessary find. A band who, though in their infancy, has all the capabilities and heart to search out for the It, the all inclusive vibratory telepathic communication we all yearn for, and may have found.
Matthew Dillon
JamBase | California
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