This was an interesting (i.e. odd) show for a few reasons. First, this was Bettie Serveert's first time ever in Pittsburgh, which is somewhat improbable for a long-established indie rock outfit but not so improbable given that they're from the Netherlands. Second, given their long-standing-ish popularity-ish, they were booked at Brillobox for $15 tickets. Third, I happened to win 2 free tickets through Opus One. Fourth, my guess is that the average age of the audience members at this show was probably 35ish, with a high standard deviation. Fifth, it was a pretty sparsely-attended show, for such a hyped band. Sixth, the three bands played different styles of rock music, and I never would have thought to put any two of them on one bill, let alone all three. Seventh, I was running late to this show since I had just finished an intramural soccer game at CMU and had to take a quick shower and then head to Lawrenceville. Eighth, I walked all the way from campus to Brillobox, even going out of my way to Craig Street and then up to Centre Avenue and then up Milvale Avenue to Liberty Avenue, just to stay along the route of the 54C bus, among others, only to have not a single bus pass me on my entire lengthy walk which took over half an hour and made me miss most of the opening act. Ninth, this has been a bit more than "a few reasons" so I should just start talking about the show from the beginning, when I arrived there.
Aaron Jentzen was playing when I arrived, sweaty and thirsty. I saw him play at the Brillo once before, so Jim and I hung out by the back bar while I chugged six glasses of water and a beer to cool off. Aaron has a great voice, I'll say that, and the other guitarist has some serious skills, but the overall sound isn't really my cup of tea. (Just went back and reread my other review, and I used that exact same phrase; must be a sign, eh?) Also, the lyrics in that song about Pablo Picasso never being called an asshole were weirdly irksome to me, even though the music was better than the other stuff I've seen. Go figure.
Atlas played next and the major thing that Jim and I agreed on about them is that they are really loud. I mean, REALLY loud. I thought the drummer was going to smash his shit apart. He also had drumsticks that were some kinda dark brown, almost black, color so maybe they were actually made out of some magic material, keeping him from breaking the drum skins. Outside of that, they had a cohesive grungy, gloomy rock sound. I've never really listened to a lot of metal or hardcore music in my life (I honestly can't name one Metallica album, for example, and the only song I can think of involves the Sandman somehow...) so I'm going to fail on spotting comparisons and influences for this band, but bear with me. The singer had an okay voice, but the bassist's voice was way better, based on the one song of his that he sang towards the end. I think if he had sang the whole time, I really would have liked it a lot more. But I have good things to say, too. The guitarist on stage-left was using all sorts of pedals and effects and really crafting some cool guitar sounds throughout their set. I just wish I could have heard him over the drummer. Check out this video of their song "Lucky Soul", it's decent.
ATLAS | Lucky Soul from ATLAS on Vimeo.
I actually had no idea what the band members of Bettie Serveert looked like, except for the strikingly blonde lead singer, Carol van Dyk, and I saw some very Dutch looking gentlemen emerge from the side door and do some silly dancing and mock-shoving of each other during Atlas' set and figured it was the band (it was). I first found the via some feature article on eMusic and downloaded Lamprey and found another album (Attagirl) at the library later. They make some straightforward indie pop-rock with highly melodious guitar and vocals; it's all really infectious and hooky, and the epitome of this is their song "Ray Ray Rain":
(This video is from the mid 1990s, so they all look really different, too.)
At the show, they seemed to stick to songs from their recent release, Pharmacy Of Love. I've only heard a few of those tracks, and they skew more towards guitar-driven rock than the sweeter, vocal-driven pop songs they wrote in the past, but I'm not complaining; I like both styles, and the fact that they can do both, back and forth, in one song is pretty cool. It's also really impressive how much the Dutch accent does not come out in the vocals; some of their between-songs banter was almost unintelligible to my ears, but that may have been because I was still reeling from Atlas' deafening set. We had to skip out just before midnight so I didn't catch the end of their set, but I was really impressed with how they came across live. I've enjoyed the two albums of theirs I have, and have been waffling on whether to dive into more, and now I'm pretty sure I'll get my hands on Pharmacy Of Love somehow. Good stuff. Here are some of my favorite songs of theirs, and singer Carol Van Dyk singing the Velvet Undeground song "Venus In Furs" with a full orchestra!
Aaron Jentzen
MySpace
Website
Pgh City Paper author page
Atlas
MySpace
Website
YouTube channel
First/last interview on Hugh's blog
Bettie Serveert
MySpace
Website
Wikipedia
