Chasing Fridays: Dummy, Draped In Black, ELO live, and more

I'm a couple hours later than usual but it's here: this week's edition of Chasing Fridays, my weekly roundup of music criticism and gig reviews. I didn't actually listen to very much new music this week, but what I did hear I had a great time listening to. I also went to two shows that left a pretty significant impression on me, and I wrote about both of those experiences down below. I'll spare you the loquacious intro and let you get reading. But first...

If you like what I wrote down below and/or in any other article I publish on Chasing Sundays, then I'd appreciate it if you subscribed at the $5/month tier. My paid subscribers (thank you!) provide me with a crucial income stream so I can maximize the number of hours I dedicate to this blog, and also just writing in general. I'm very fortunate to make my living with words, but that's getting harder and harder in this economic climate, so any support is greatly appreciated.

Draped in Black - Pure Ecstasy Through Perforation

We've reached the point in the old-school metalcore revival where Cradle of Filth and Emperor have become valid reference points for bands operating within hardcore. Draped in Black are a new band out of the Louisville region who're taking the next logical step beyond what Balmora and Since My Beloved have been doing over the last couple years. Their debut EP, Pure Ecstasy Through Perforation, is raw metalcore that's laced with eerie synths and produced to sound more like a black-metal record than anything resembling hardcore. The surface-level reference points are older metalcore/melodeath hybrids like Dead Blue Sky and As Hope Dies, but there's a distinctly modern flair to the mosh parts on songs like "Lex Talionis" and "Unfathomable Hatred."

For all the gothic imagery and occasional synths, these songs are meant to get a room full of Sanction fans spin-kicking. The aesthetic is a bit of a red herring, and I think that's interesting. I've grown weary of this type of metalcore over the last half-year because it's almost all bands doing what Balmora, Since My Beloved, Adrienne, and Nomad already did better, but I like this because it adds a dash of theatricality to the formula without swapping out mosh parts for corny lead marathons. Once this tips a half-inch in either direction (melodeath or melodic black-metal), I tend to lose interest unless the musicianship is absolutely flawless. But the line Draped in Black are riding with this EP is entertaining to me — for now.

Dummy - Free Energy

This band made asses of themselves in an interview (and subsequent Twitter meltdown) a couple years ago, and it soured a lot of people I know to what they do. Since I love hardcore, I have an especially high tolerance for great musicians who constantly put their foot in their mouth like a great big stogie,​ ​so I'm conditioned to forgetting about cringey discourse of yore and just taking in the music for what it is​. That's especially easy in the case of Dummy, who played one of the tightest sets I've ever seen in 2022, delivering their brisk Stereolab/Broadcast amalgams with staggering precision. I enjoyed their 2021 album, Mandatory Enjoyment, a lot but thought that they came across so much better live. Free Energy is a more accurate representation of just how powerful and ​engrossing this band can be.

Sitting somewhere between shoegaze, krautrock, psychy trip-hop, and Yo La Tengo-ian indie-pop (much like their peers in Peel Dream Magazine), this record hits all the pleasure points for millennials like me who view the 90s the way boomers view the 60s: a fertile goldmine of nostalgic sounds that'll be ripe for reinterpreting through a modern lens until the end of time. ​"Blue Dada" sounds like Seefeel's Quique crossed with A Thousand Leaves-era Sonic Youth; a motorik groove with neatly coiffed analog synths that ultimately gets doused with charred guitars like a glass of orange juice spilling over a museum display. The surging glide guitar warbles of "Soonish..." are, well, "Soon"-ish, while "Unshaped Road" has a later-era Spacemen 3 sound.

Mandatory Enjoyment was as much as rolodex of Dummy's record collector influences as it was an original body of work. Free Energy is more fearless in its reach and savvier in its attention to detail. They've realized what they do best (exacting krautrock grooves that gradually become more vibrant as the silly-putty synths and spice-shaker vocals pile on) and also how to ensure each climax lands with maximum impact. Nearly every other song on this album is a lush, mostly-instrumental change-up, from the drum breaks 'n' guitar streaks of "Intro-UB" and the yearning saxophone of "Opaline Bubbletear," to the ambient piano of "Dip in the Lake" and the hammered dulcimer-gone-shoegaze of closer "Godspin." At times, Mandatory Enjoyment felt a little bit like a cheat code for attracting Broadcast fans, but Free Energy makes a case that Dummy will one day be a record collector reference point unto themselves.

Electric Light Orchestra @ PPG Paints

Until last year, Electric Light Orchestra were just one of those bands I knew by being a sentient American who grew up listening to classic rock radio. It wasn't until I read a book about power-pop, in which writer Kate Sullivan enthusiastically argues that ELO should be admitted into the halls of the power-pop pantheon, that I decided to give any of their albums a serious listen. Upon doing so, I instantly fell in love with the grandiose pop craftsmanship of songs like "Telephone Line" and "Shangri-La," and when friend of the blog Shawn Cooke invited me to tag along to the Pittsburgh date of ELO's last ever tour, I knew I had to take him up on the offer. I'm glad I did.

Shawn, using his well-documented ticket scrounging abilities, scored us modestly-priced seats that were essentially at the ground level just to the left of the stage — virtually the best seats in the house. We were within earshot of ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne and his 12-piece backing band, which included three keyboardists, a string trio, three guitarists, two backup singers, and a drummer. Lynne is 76 years old, and while his voice still sounded impressively intact while singing the fluttery pop songs he wrote 50 years ago, he otherwise looks his age. He had trouble walking on and off the stage and was visibly pretending to play guitar for most of the set.

It didn't matter. The guy still nailed the falsetto hooks of "Telephone Line" and "Evil Woman," and the rest of his bandmates, many of whom were several decades his junior, were dialed in so accurately that Lynne could've been flubbing every note and it still would've sounded pretty damn great. As I've written on this blog before, I'm not accustomed to going to shows of this magnitude. As someone who mainly sees live music in small bars and clubs, a big venue to me is like a 2,000-cap room. I had previously seen the Smashing Pumpkins play in this space, the 14,000-capacity PPG Paints Arena (where the Penguins play hockey), and I was flabbergasted by how impersonal it felt to be 700 yards away from Billy Corgan, all the way up in the nosebleeds, surrounded by Gen-Xer's who got furious when I stood up to dance a little bit during "Zero."

This time, I knew to expect an older crowd who'd probably want to stay seated the whole time, and by accepting that at the door, I ended up having a fine time just plopped in my chair knocking my foot to each tune. Compared to my Smashing Pumpkins vantage point, it was definitely a significant improvement to be seated just a stone's throw from the gigantic space ship prop that was towering behind the band. The only downside of our great spot is that I had a too-accurate view of all the comically hideous AI-generated graphics that flashed on the screen during each song. Awful, faux-psychedelic montages of shapeshifting subway cars and mossy trees sprouting in real time. The worst might've been a clip of an astronaut trotting toward the camera lens that was shoddily animated like one of those Facebook messenger gifs that inexplicably never seems to load all of its pixels.

Fortunately, the music didn't succumb to the same level of washed un-chicness. However, what struck me most about the whole show was just how manicured it was. That's not even a knock on ELO, I'm just not used to seeing a band play a set that, from a technical standpoint, sounded absolutely flawless. The music was so evenly mixed that I could've been convinced it was pre-recorded at some points. I was also surprised that it wasn't loud at all. Being so close to the hulking monitors, I expected to have the strength of my earplugs tested, but every DIY basement show I've ever been to was more sonically imposing than this was. None of that is a criticism against ELO. Rather, it says more about how unfamiliar I am with the experience of seeing a band as mainstream as them.

The show is a formula. It's a science. Lynne has been doing this on-and-off for over five decades, and the whole shebang was so preened and primped that someone else could've been standing in Lynne's spot and it still would've been a good time just to hear those songs. OK, maybe that's a criticism. It definitely felt like Lynne, who swears this is the band's final go, was just up there going through the motions, only offering a couple brief words of thanks between tracks, rarely smiling behind his tinted glasses and bristly beard, and enlisting his guitarist to introduce the band members rather than doing it himself. But the fact that Lynne could've been swapped out with an imposter is also a testament to Lynne's real legacy: the songs. Songs that are so big, so glowing, so easily lovable that they're almost too good to fail. The show was practically guaranteed to sound glorious no matter what. I certainly can't say the same about my local hardcore shows.

Sweeping Promises @ Club Cafe

I've wanted to see Sweeping Promises live since the first time I heard their 2020 album Hunger for a Way Out, a record that never fails to make me dance in my living room like one of the silhouettes in the old iPod commercials. This week, the Kansas-based band finally came through Pittsburgh, and I got to hear songs like "Cross Me Out" and "Good Living Is Coming For You," the title-track of their stellar 2023 album, outside of my personal speakers. It was everything I hoped it would be. Which is to say that their set was genuinely incredible. Singer-bassist Lira Mondal hoots, hollers, and howls like a feral animal onstage in a way that doesn't quite come through on their records. Their albums have a selective lo-fi-ness to them that obscures Mondal's vocals in peculiar reverb, so even when she's screaming on a song like "Eraser," she still sounds artfully distant.

Not in the live setting. The gusto in her voice was wildly arresting, and the whole time my attention was split between her microphone dominance and guitarist Caufield Schnug's animated leaps and wiggles. He's one of those guys who looks at once 14 and 33, and when he bent down in front of Mondal's mic to say a few words, he sounded exactly like Professor Frink from the Simpsons. There aren't enough characters like that in indie rock, nor are there enough guitarists with his particular style; a shredder who exercises restraint until the song calls for him to let loose, in which he becomes Ron Asheton with a one-beer tolerance. My favorite Sweeping Promises songs are the dubby, funky lurches like "Blue," "An Appetite," and "Can't Hide It," which they didn't play at this show. Their setlist was almost entirely the faster post-punk rippers, but people in the crowd still danced, and I developed a whole new level of appreciation for one of my favorite bands of late.