Margaret BauerThe 90 Day Men stopped in St. Louis on Friday night in support of their new album, “Panda Park,” playing for an appreciative audience at the Rocket Bar. The Chicago-based post-rockers didn’t stray far from the album’s track sequence, but they infused their experimental songs with a live energy that had the crowd mesmerized for most of their hour-long set.
The evening started out slow, with nothing to do but drink $1 Cokes at the bar (hooray for being under age!) and watch Stephen King’s “Christine” (truly one of the low points of his cinematic adaptations). Only an appearance by the craggy-faced Harry Dean Stanton kept my eyes glued to the closed-captioned television. Opening band the Pat Sajak Assassinations went on about 9:30, but despite their excellent name they failed to impress many people with their instrumental, multi-part sonic experiments. It was hard to latch on to any one song due to the constantly switching time signatures and melodies, and it didn’t help that they dragged on for 10-15 minutes apiece, either. The band members themselves proved to be talented musicians, so perhaps by cleaning up their sound a bit they can really go places.
Pit Er Pat was the second act, and while they held on to conventional song structure more than their progressive predecessors, they stilled oozed mediocrity. A female keyboard player and male bassist shared the vocal duties, but their cutesy trade-off voices couldn’t help the band’s forgettable songs. There was also an inexplicable amount of jamming here as well, with one song segueing into another, Phish-style. By this point the original “Halloween” was on the TV screen, and it proved much more fun to watch horny teenagers get skewered by Michael Myers than to listen to bouncy, boring indie pop.
Finally, the 90 Day Men took the stage, and within minutes of starting “Even Time Ghost Can’t Stop Wagner” it was apparent that they’re one of the most dynamic rock groups out there right now. “Time Ghost” wound its way around a proggy keyboard melody, with lead singer/bassist Robert Lowe howling away. In concert, his normally abrasive wail took on a soulful quality, especially as he put one hand to his ear and gestured with the other while his voice wavered up and down with the music. The song built to a bombastic climax, with the drummer pounding out his complex rhythms and the keyboardist throwing in some crazy flourishes. It’s a crowning achievement for the band, reminiscent of multi-part milestones like Radiohead’s “Paranoid Android.” The set list continued in the order of the album, with Lowe occasionally handing over the mic to guitarist Brian Case, who sang in a hushed monotone. Case rarely soloed, but he added the right amount of feedback and distortion to help fill out the songs. The only departure from “Panda Park” was a long, droning number from the band’s last album, 2002’s “To Everybody,” which, despite its unfamiliarity, still captivated the crowd. The slightly short set ended with “Night Birds,” the instrumental closer to “Panda Park.” The song’s steady groove had heads nodding before exploding into its rocking coda. To top things off, “Planet of the Apes” was on the screen at that point, and watching Charlton Heston escape the clutches of damn, dirty apes while the 90 Day Men thanked the crowd was a heavenly experience. In less than 90 minutes, the 90 Day Men proved their merit and solidified “Panda Park”‘s position as one of the best albums of 2004.