REVIEW: Greeped Out at the Egg
04/03 @ The Egg, Albany
Photos by Kiki Vassilakis
“By the end of the set I began to think, maybe they are the aliens Greep was mentioning.”
As I made my way through the Concourse and into the Kitty Carlisle Theatre at The Egg, I passed by paintings from Rothko to Pollock, priming my eyes with an abstract visual experience. It was a prequel to the experience I was about to embark upon once Geordie Greep and his band took the stage. This was the band’s second to last night all together — Greep and drummer Kind David Ike-Elechi had flights back to England following the next night’s show — so they pulled out all the stops.
With a very chaotic album, The New Sound, and a history of bending mayhem in his previous band, black midi, Geordie Greep’s live shows are even crazier than his recordings. Greep controls and channels this musical disorder into a 3-hour-long set of improvised and extended jams. The band had so much fun, they played the whole show without a break, only realizing at the end.
After the first three songs, Greep began an egg-themed beat poetry monologue: “Here we are in The Egg. Back from whence we came. The egg hatched and out they came,” he delivered before introducing the band: Dave Strawn on bass, Eden Marsh on guitar, King David Ike-Elechi on drums, Sachy Moyano on percussion, and Cameron Campbell on the keyboards. “We are all back to the egg,” he remarked.
Greep continued his musing, “Aliens. Are they here? Are they among all of us?” The band joined in with space-like synthesizers, ominous long bass hums, dissonant chimes and guitar feedback. “Aliens. Some say the aliens built the pyramids. Some say that the aliens flew into a hole in Antarctica and have another city under the ice. Some say that to an alien, all of our language is one word. All of our music is one note. All of our vistas and landscapes are a flattened plane. The aliens, we are so far below them we don’t even see their fricatives. It just looks like the sky. If there are aliens, that is what I think is the case of how they are compared to us. Some have gone far enough to think that they’ve seen an alien, but isn’t it true that they are thought of to have gone mad, completely bonkers, mental, nuts. When you go nuts, you do crazy things. You go cr-cr-cr-cr-crazy. Bonkers.”
From there, Greep led a bluesy jam highlighting his guitar skills, crossing seamlessly between blues and jazz and something entirely different. Appropriately, this led into the track, “Blues.”
The set featured many hidden, playful references to other songs, or “Easter Eggs.” Yes, pun totally intended.
The first of these was a tease of Andrea Bocelli’s “Con Te Partirò” where Moyano surprised the crowd with his opera technique. Later, Moyano sang “Let’s get lit!” in operatic-style which I now think is the only way these three words should be delivered.
Greep briefly played the intro to “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago, continuing the end of tour, parting theme.
The best reference was when Greep led into "Jailhouse Rock” with just two notes, putting Ike-Elechi on the spot to sing the first couple verses, which lit up the crowd.
The fun continued as Greep began jokingly singing and picking “Na-na, la-la-la-la-la, na-na-na-na-na”, referencing “La La La” by Naughty Boy and Sam Smith. Ike-Elechi puts his hands to his ears and shakes his head. Once I figured out what song it was, I had a similar reaction to Ike-Elechi, but somehow Greep made even this song sound genius.
These incorporated references made the set feel familiar in contrasting with the otherworldly undertones.
Two unreleased songs, “Snow Shoe” and “Mighty Mouse,” were played in this set, further adding to the anything goes energy.
Later, Greep returned to his alien discussion, but with more urgency while Campbell and Ike-Elechi played a faster beat behind him. “We come here in peace. We flew here on a ship from space. We come from a distant time,” he began. “We come from a place where you can’t hear above a certain frequency. We can only hear four strings from one dude,” Greep says, referring to Strawn on bass. “And we prefer that when that one dude does it with the thumb.” Strawn then goes into a slap-style bass solo highlighting the importance of the bass in this band and this style.
The band had been teasing the riff of “Motorbike” throughout the night, which finally paid off in a climactic, extended performance near the end. The rhythm section led the jam into “Motorbike”. It was the evening’s best demonstration of their chemistry and fun. Marsh was swirling their torso in circles, waving the neck of the guitar like a magic wand, conjuring feedback. Campbell stood up to hit the keys even harder. This was the most experimental song and performance that really showed this band’s jamming chemistry, musical talent, and cool factor, having fun through collaborative experimentation. Sometimes like a dream, other times like a nightmare.
The band began “Magician,” but then left the stage as Cambell continued to play the piano alone going into “Parabola,” his own song he wrote in high school. The band returned and continued an extended jam on “Magician” with a few more false stops until they finally ended and bowed, taking time to look at and thank the audience.
By the end of the set I began to think, maybe they are the aliens Greep was mentioning.
