Report: Grass Widow Live in Easthampton

San Fran's Grass Widow, plus openers Coasting, Troop of Echoes and Outdates, bring the girl power to the Flywheel in Easthampton, Mass., on October 17.

Text & photos by Jennifer Kelly

It's a pretty good night for girl power at the Flywheel. Grass Widow, maybe the best of the current crop of female-centric post-punkers, is here from San Francisco to headline, while Coasting, a guitar-and-drums duo from Brooklyn and Nashville that is just starting to make a splash, has the #2 slot. The locals on the bill are more gender neutral - with jazz-rock-fusionists Troop of Echoes holding down for the boys, and shout punk Outdates two-thirds male, but with a long-haired and ethereal looking girl bass player thumping out a Wipers-esque low-end.

Outdates are just finishing up when I arrive, their fast-charging punk rock in the aggressive-but-not-quite-thrashy mode of the Volcano Sons and, as I said, the Wipers. They're not bad, in a hard-shouted, righteous kind of way, playing right down on the floor, amid the kids, Marc Candilore leaning over the mic until he almost touches the nearest people, Andrew McCarthy drumming with full-arm-extended abandon, the bass player Ally Einbinder stoic-faced and resplendent in fishnets. Their last song starts in a bashing, smashing, freight-train attack on the drums, and a raucous, sped-up surf guitar riff that would make Dick Dale proud. Candilore stands motionless, mouth wide-open as he rants into the mic, the kids bouncing off each other and the pillars and the walls.

Troop of Echoes, next, is the only band on the bill to fall outside even the loosest definition of punk rock. They play in the jazz-into-prog-into-experimental territory of all those bands on the Cuneiform label, their grooves a little too complicated for jam, a little too warm and sunny for post-rock. It's like Tortoise, but for dancing (except that, admittedly, sometimes Tortoise is for dancing), the blare of sax wheeling in dissonant abandon over viscous, bouncy basslines.  The bass player, Harrison Hartley, is fun to watch, a big guy, totally enrapt in what he's going, bobbing, weaving, jumping up and down, banging on his four-strings with a borrowed drum stock, and not missing a lick, sometimes locked in dialogue with also-excellent drummer Daniel Moriarty.

The band's evident skill - and its reliance on Peter Gilli's alto and soprano sax for melodic flavor - makes them seem like a grown-up, slightly anarchic version of the world's best high school jazz band. They play an interestingly angular, rhythmically intriguing piece called "Golden Gears", and a slower, smoother, lite-jazzier one named after a city in Maryland. Guitar player Nicholas Cooper switches over to synth for "Little Bird," giving the band an even more pronounced fusion-y flavor, but not in any kind of chilled, hypertechnical, cerebral way. This is post-rock played with the same fever and joy as post-punk. The instruments are different but the enthusiasm is not.

Coasting comes on next, a pair of young women in lady-like summer dresses and flats, whose music is anything but prim. They are, specifically, Madison Farmer on guitar and Fiona Campbell on drums. Campbell lives in Brooklyn and has played with the Vivian Girls. Farmer lives in Nashville now, but the pair of them met in Brooklyn while both working for house show impresario Todd P. After helping out with a parade of DIY shows, the two caught the bug themselves, and Coasting has the rough-edged, rough-housing jubilance of the best kind of untutored music.

To begin with Fiona Campbell hits pretty hard at her kit, setting up rackety, locomotive cadences on tom and snares, then blowing them up with rapid-fire fills and rolls. Farmer is no wallflower either, scrubbing out angular, rubbed-out chord patterns and trading yelped, sung, shouted and spat-out vocal lines with Campbell. The two of them sing in strident unison sometimes, joining, at one point for a joyful, defiant chorus of "You've got that right." Still more often than not, they fill in each other's gaps, Campbell tossing a line out, Farmer tossing it back, guitar breaking into flourishes when the drums stop and drums exploding into sudden scraps of white space. There's an asymmetry to their melodies that you might associate with earlier post-punk bands - Delta 5 and Ut come to mind - but also a flirtation with softer, girl group forms of pop. They're not especially loud, this duo, but they have a kind of unremitting energy that is like high volume, but only softer.

They also are clearly still in the whoa-this-is-so-fun stage of the rock travelogue. At one point, behind her kit, Campbell suggests a song, Farmer plays a looping riff from it, and Campbell breaks out into a huge grin, as if it were her very favorite. They also mention, two or three times, how psyched they are to be playing with Grass Widow. Their excitement - at playing together, at being there, at making these songs - punctuates staccato, wordless choruses with extra exclamation points. "Oh! Oh! Oh!" the one sings. "Oh! Oh! Oh!," the other answers.

Coasting is right to be amped about performing with Grass Widow. They play next, and, after a long, frustrating struggle with the Flywheel's amplification set-up (has anyone ever played here and heard anything in the monitor?), the three of them decide to "Just try it and see what happens."

Grass Widow is a three piece, tall willowy Raven Mahon on guitar, wise-cracking Lillian Maring on drums and Hannah Lew on bass. The three parts seem equally important, Lew's abstract, Cubist-funk bassline intersecting in interesting ways with Maring's blustery beat, challenging the slash and clangor of Mahon's guitars. Vocally, too, the duties (and emphasis) are shared, in tightly coiled calls and responses and blossoming three-part harmonies that glisten like a slick of ice over notched and jittery post-punk mayhem.

Past Time, Grass Widow's first full-length, came out last year on Kill Rock Stars. They plan to release their next, now that KRS is out of business, on their own label. Lew tells me that the second record is done but not quite ready for release. In the meantime, they have some 7" singles out. The set list mixes old stuff and new, starting with long-time staples. There's "Tattoo," with its lacerating beat and soothing harmonies; "Celebrate the Mundane" with deadpan verse and swooping, circling refrain and bass-thumping, out-of-whack-riffed "Out of Body Experience," to start, and then new single "Milo Minute." The blistering post-punk rampage of "Rattled Call" breaks and turns, somehow, in an a cappella madrigal. The three women charge ahead chaotically, arms flying, notes pinging off each other like shrapnel, then when you least expect it, pull back into the sweetest kind of tuneful-ness.

The set closes with "Manniquin," the other side of "Milo Minute," and no one is ready to let them go. Maring explains that they have never liked the idea of an encore, even in Europe where it is almost an insult to an appreciative crowd if you do not walk off the stage, then return for a few more songs. Lew says, "But you can just do this," and turns her back, then turns again to face us. "We're back." And everybody claps. There are two more angular, angsty, oddly pretty songs, and then the night is over. I'd say that if it was a contest - and it probably wasn't - the girls won.