his past Saturday night at Union Transfer was certainly a local family affair with The War on Drugs, Sun Airway, and Ape School filling the stage with some of the areas finest musicians as well as having them behind the scenes manning the sound. Ha…as predicted by R5, the Fishtown community was definitely in the house as well as the rest of Philly who came out to support on an evening filled with plenty to do in town.
Ape School rolled into the venue seven-deep with Michael Johnson leading the gang of performers that included Dr. Dog’s Eric Slick, The Extraordinaires’ Zach “Scooter” Poyatt and Adam Ravitz, and many others. We got a taste of new material from Johnson’s upcoming album Junior Violence, which is planned for release in late spring 2012, and its title gives us a hint of the aural assault that we’ll find on the record. The hazy, woozy folk of Ape School’s self-titled album seemed to have been left behind in the wake of the noisy rock band that showed up to open the evening. They were much more impressive than the version of the band which we had experienced at one of our Deli-presented showcases a while back.
Sun Airway followed, and we’ve seen them live multiples times this year, but we are always happy to do so. They were missing a guitarist which we’re not sure is a permanent thing now. However, our 2010’s End of the Year Emerging Artist Poll Winners still sounded as comfortable on the big stage as they did at this year’s POPPED! Festival. Their setlist consisted of mostly songs from their debut album and the A and B-sides of their latest single with a new song called “New Movements” thrown into the mix. The band definitely wrapped up 2011 on a high note with their final performance of the year.
Finally, The War on Drugs took the stage after a bit of time setting up, but it was understandable since they had extra gear for Drugs alumni like Kurt Vile, Kyle Lloyd, and Mike Zanghi to join them on stage so we knew that we’d be getting some of our favorite classics from past albums. Their current four-piece lineup consisting of Dave Hartley on bass, Robbie Bennett on keys/guitar, Steven Urgo on drums, and of course, Adam Granduciel on guitar/vox has had a lot of time on the road this year to work on their chemistry, and it certainly showed at UT. The band sounded the tightest that we’ve ever heard them over the years, and their comfort level also allowed for a looseness in their playing which led to plenty of experimentation and extended jams on most of their tunes. Their set was about a hundred and five minutes long with only fifteen songs. The show highlight for us was the monstrous jam in “A Needle in Your Eye #16” with Vile and others to close out the set. While the stigma of being called a “jam band” might be frowned upon these days after the flooding of such bands into the music scene in the nineties and early aughts, it is pretty obvious to us that a resurgence of “jam bands” is inevitable and already here in one form or another with rising and established indie bands finally being less afraid to admit that they grew up on a healthy dose of The Grateful Dead and Phish. So it wasn’t surprising at all that the first of the two encore songs was a cover of The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey,” which we already knew that The War on Drugs had whipped out earlier on this tour. After a raucous evening of intense jams, the band mellowed things out with “Black Water Falls” sending the satisfied crowd on its way with something to lament over as the New Year approaches. You can check out some of our photos from the evening HERE.