The World Is Waiting For A Knock At The Door

The Rapture @ Webster Hall 10/30/2006
Heaven / Get Myself Into It / Sister Savior / The Devil / Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks / I Need Your Love / Killing / Pieces of the People We Love / Whoo! Alright, Yeah…Uh Huh / House of Jealous Lovers / The Coming of Spring / Echoes / The Sound // Down For So Long / Olio

As you can see by the setlist, the Rapture were not fucking around. Fifteen straight bangers, no slow songs, no duds. A solid, relentless block of the best dance punk music of this decade, performed with spirit and intensity by four guys who seem far more comfortable in their skin than when I saw them on an early leg of their tour for Echoes.

The Rapture “The Sound” – A major part of the Rapture’s excellence, aside from simply being a lot more talented, tasteful, imaginative, and intelligent than the vast majority of their peers (let alone their copycats), is that the band have a keenly developed sense of dynamics that comes through in their live performance, but more remarkably, is both preserved and enhanced in their studio recordings. In an era in which too many records (regardless of merit) suffer from flat, matter of fact production that levels out even the most physically stimulating songs, the Rapture have the good sense to work with producers that recognize that the music needs to be recorded in ways that compensate for the immediacy of the band’s presence and enhance the dynamics of the music rather than just imply what you might hear if you happened to be there in the room with them. The Rapture and their collaborators made Echoes and Pieces of the People We Love with the understanding that on some level, the tracks had to have a basic utilitarian effect — they had to demand physical movement by emphasizing every textural and rhythmic shift, to make every moment in every song work with very precise intentions. That’s why “The Coming of Spring” sounds like a matter of life and death; that’s why “Whoo! Alright – Yeah…Uh Huh” drags you by your collar into its climactic reverie; and that’s why the blasts of noise in “The Sound” feel like concentrated adrenaline shot into your body via headphones. (Click here to buy it from Sound Fix.)

Presets “Are You The One?” – Presets, a duo from Sydney who opened for the Rapture last night, illustrated my point about quality sound engineering rather nicely with their set. Their album so badly represents what they are capable of doing live that it’s sort of ridiculous. In person, their songs are urgent and physical, with deep electronic basslines tugging bodies into motion along with heavy beats from both a live drummer and/or a loud, well-mixed drum machine. They clearly understand the dynamics of modern dance music, and they bring it in a live context, like a streamlined though far less flamboyant version of what I saw Basement Jaxx do at the same venue a few weeks ago. However, even the best songs on their album seem a bit hollow, and the beats sound neutered and drained of energy. “Are You The One?” hints at the potency of the live show, but it’s simply recorded all wrong. The song is there, and it’s a good one, but it’s a only a fraction of the feeling. (Click here to buy it from Insound.)

Also:

Dreamdate “Monster Mash” – I have not actively participated in Halloween in about a decade. Well, to be more clear, I have not dressed up since the mid-90s, though I have had awkward experiences at a few events in which most everyone else was in some sort of costume. I don’t dislike the day at all, it’s really been a matter of not being engaged with any social function that would require me to participate like a normal, fun-loving person. That said, I am indeed pro-fun, and I hope that this cute, faithful cover of the Halloween classic “Monster Mash” by a trio of Californian girls can help to psyche you up for whatever festivity you may be involved with tonight. (Click here for the Dreamdate MySpace page.)