Charleston has a great reputation as a good tour stop for hipster bands invading down the eastern seaboard, and they usually end up booked at the Village Tavern, Cumberland’s, or the Map Room. All those places are regular bars and cater to their own swarms of barflies. So, when weird synth grinding howlers dip into their watering hole, the locals waver between amused and irritated.
On Friday, the Map Room hosted a couple of heralds for the yankee horde and it didn’t disappoint.
Dragons of Zynth opened with one of the most audience challenging performances I’ve seen in Charleston. I went back and forth from hating them to thinking it was total genius. They delivered a set filled with Bowie-like flourishes over effusive guitar-synth funk sludge. Obviously used to more active crowds, the stage performance was fearless and vital.
That brought me to City Paper Moment #4, where four black guys turned out blistering Yankee Grunge Crunk (Dragons of Zynth) and a few days earlier five white guys delivered crowd-lifting Senegalese Afro-pop (Toubab Krewe).
The headliner for the night was Celebration, 4AD newbies with a new album to promote. They had a lot to live up to after punishing the barflies with an hour long soundcheck. All those mic’s had to be there for a reason. What they recorded was an incredibly textured and primal performance that lept from seance to exorcism. Katrina Ford’s vocals carry a melody and weight that’s akin to a cool breeze on a third degree burn. David Bergander’s drumming stomped over Sean Antanaitis’s intricate synth work in a tempo bending kung-fu match. Ford joined in at the end with a tom-tom pounding finale.
Despite having a nearly full card, I got off a couple of shots:
