(2010 Jan 6) New York Times publishes 'Moods Conducive to Dying and Dancing' - reporting from SALEM's gig

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(2010 Jan 6) New York Times publishes 'Moods Conducive to Dying and Dancing' - reporting from SALEM's gig

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Music Review | Salem
Moods Conducive to Dying and Dancing

By JON CARAMANICA
Published: January 6, 2010

Image
Daniel Barry for The New York Times

Up on the screen above the Glasslands Gallery stage on Tuesday night, a car was being swallowed whole by flames. Beneath it the Chicago-born band Salem was suggesting what it might sound like to die.

On a series of breathy, claustrophobic EPs and singles beginning in 2008, Salem — the trio of John Holland, Heather Marlatt and Jack Donoghue — has been honing an oozy, cold style; a pastiche of several strains of pessimistic music: there are hints of noise-rock and shoegaze, as well as the stamp of the Houston rap pioneer D.J. Screw, who slowed records down until they became gummy and desperate.

It’s not fun, this sound. And onstage it was even hazier. All three members took turns out front. Mr. Holland, who never took off his ski cap, sang, gripping the microphone hard, with hands heavy with rings. Ms. Marlatt — who has a sweet voice, very well hidden — was smoking while she played her keyboard, and smoking when she sang. (But hey, so were people in the crowd.)

She helps enliven “Redlights,” one of Salem’s best songs, which on Tuesday night was like M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” as heard through thick earmuffs, all low end and distortion but maintaining the hypnotic cyclicality of the beat.

The show opened and closed with Mr. Donoghue out front, in a droopy, oversize black T-shirt, rapping a couple of songs while his long hair cascaded around his face. Recently Salem has released remixes of songs by Playboy Tre and Gucci Mane, but those versions have sounded like ghosts trying to claim the vibrant rappers as their own, and failing.

Severity is more Salem’s style. The group has beautiful album art, with the band name rendered in stark white outline over gloomy, cloudy pictures — the three might make great graphic designers, or, given the uncomfortable images playing on screen throughout their set, experimental filmmakers. But the performance was hollow at the core, aspirated, almost soothing in its inconsequence.

Gatekeeper, which opened the show, also hailing from Chicago, had a far more productive, and convincing, approach to the dark: pummel through it.

A couple of months ago, this duo — Matthew Arkell and Aaron David Ross — released an excellent debut EP, “Optimus Maximus” (Fright). In interviews they talk about the influence of horror-film scores on their work, but in truth, everything points to club music of the mid- to late-’80s, with their drum-machine slaps tracing a lineage from the “Miami Vice” soundtrack to Latin freestyle to Milli Vanilli.

In moments here, you half-expected someone to begin voguing spontaneously. Even though thick smoke was choking the room, everything felt bright, erotic, alive.

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