Live Review: Railcars and Handsome Furs @ Bottom of the Hill 4/15

By Matthew Jordan

Oh, deceitful memory! Every show seen at protean Bottom of the Hill leaves an entirely different impression. Bottom of the Hill is not the seedy den of patched woolens and greasy-headed rockulidge of Sebadoh shows past! It is not the brightly colored, enthusiastic pop brilliance of AC Newman and the yuppies, blazered and bangled, cheerfully listening, smiling, ecstatic! Bottom of the Hill could be anything to anybody. (more >>)

It would be no surprise to hear somebody say through grinding, spotted teeth that they saw the best Gwar show of their life there, and to hear their strange bedfellow companion respond that they, too, saw the show of their life there, but this one was the Blue Man Group. The club could be set down in Anytown, USA, and not lose a step. It has the dusky, boxcar feel of a small rock club in the Midwest -– picture Chicago, Cleveland, Duluth -– without the hulking corn-fed fans and exposed brick walls. Globular art deco lights running the along the spectrum of red from bubblegum to burgundy hang from the ceiling, and kitsch Christian iconography sits atop the ledges lining the walls above black and white prints of buxom burlesque stars. The graffiti on the inside of a stall door in the women’s room reads:

FUCK
if your [sic] true to yourself, the rest will follow
PENIS PENIS PENIS
only death is real ...

The crowd for the April 15th, 2008, DJ Bagel Ted, Railcars, and Handsome Furs show was notably assorted. What a delightful change of scene after years of shows populated exclusively by coke-addled waitresses and bartenders in dangerously tapered jeans, or lanky white kids in garish multi-colored sneakers and oversized ballcaps, or fist-pumping fratguys and their vapid toadying girlfriends. The crowd was somewhat spare, but vibrant and lively, and somewhat homely (the beautiful people, of course, were at Cat Power). Lesbians held hands and leaned against the bar. Self-hugging nerds, just out of view of slender and knock-kneed lovelies sulkily drinking Pabst, watched the ground in front of their feet. Some middle-aged couples chatted animatedly while other middle-aged couples chatted calmly. The odd bearded outdoorsman wandered around in conspicuously labeled fleeces and Danskos. For an indie show in San Francisco, there were shockingly few Asian girlfriends (probably at Cat Power).

Aside from a vinyl poster hanging from the wall announcing something called “Bagel Radio,” DJ Bagel Ted was nowhere to be found. It could be that he had calmly pressed “Play” and walked around rubbing elbows, as the music between sets was the all-too-accessible indie riffraff that Ted apparently loves. But it could be that he was at Cat Power.

Railcars (formerly Aria C Jalali) opened. The band is front man and guitarist Aria C. Jalali (now Railcars), multi-instrumentalist Dasha Bulatova, bassist and laptopist Shaw Waters, and guitarist Biljana Mirkovski. All four are undergraduates -- Jalali and Bulatov at Cal, the other two elsewhere -- but it seems that they might not make it to graduation: opening several shows on the California leg of the Handsome Furs’ tour is a great way to get noticed. Clearly, people like these guys enough to give them a shot. Their set Tuesday night is in the eye of the beholder. That dumbshit axiom, of course, goes for anything, but it is particularly applicable to Railcars.

The scathing, sputtering critic might condemn Railcars for being painfully derivative, for pinning their indie du jour influences to their threadbare t-shirts, for a lack of charisma and gravitas, for Jalali’s underwhelming and grating and imitative voice, for sounding like they learned their instruments by diligently mimicking Arcade Fire and Sunset Rubdown records, for being long on earnestness and hipster adorability and short on songwriting and musicianship. Sneering, this critic would mock (“fumbling idealist crusaderism”) Jalali’s wan announcement that they were passing out free condoms and that he wants the crowd “to fuck each other” but he also wants them “to be safe.” “If you knew the foggiest fact about semi-anonymous rock club venery, son,” this critic would say, “your music would be a hell of a lot better.”

The sympathetic critic -– that rare contemplator who weighs her beer in one hand and her turns of phrase in the other, who with capped pen is able to smile and revel, who can grant the benefit of a doubt -– will call that first critic a dick and say he listens to rock music for the wrong reasons. She might point to Railcars' massive upside: with a few more gigs under their belt and a bit more confidence, their brilliant pop sentimentality will shine through. Railcars, providing they can establish a voice for themselves that doesn’t echo whatever flash in the pan your journalist friend was cluing you into three years ago, has the potential to be a great band. Though their only real percussion was Bulatova’s glockenspiel, occasionally dark and crunching synth lines would power through -– subduing Jalali’s voice and letting it become a part of the song rather than its focal point -– and really get the crowd moving. It was certainly not the case all the time, but every few songs the band demonstrated a real talent for compelling, sonically interesting, challenging musicality.

Give these kids (Jalali’s 21, and Bulatova’s only 19) a chance to mature as musicians and songwriters, and let them develop a sound that isn’t so perceptibly pick-pocketed from the staff picks at insound.com, and you’ll have yourself a great little band. Hopefully their forthcoming full-length debut will find them heading in the right direction, but either way, Railcars has demonstrable talent that should emerge more and more as they mature.

A brief note on the Handsome Furs: they totally ruled. See them live. If you’re, say, a young synth-pop band looking to make it, take notes on how energetically they perform and interact with the crowd. Note how much they enjoy themselves, how much they move around, the sexiness of Alexei Perry's concussive dancing, how that infects everybody else in the room. Note how each sound in their songs is distinct from the next, and how there’s a reason that guitar is up there.