Quasi Came Back to Pittsburgh

Quasi hasn't been to Pittsburgh in about 20 years. I forget the exact year but it very likely might have been 2003. What I do remember is that I had been waiting to see them live since first hearing them in the late '90s and on the night that they finally made it town (aside from an appearance at the hard-to-get-to amphitheatre outside town), I was playing a show that same night. After finishing our set, I hightailed over the hills and through a tunnel, managing to catch about three songs. One was an encore of the Who's "Amazing Journey." I was not about to miss another opportunity to catch them. My wish finally came true this past Tuesday night at Club Cafe. (As a sidenote, Quasi's Sam Coomes had been to Pittsburgh just a few months prior as a member of Jon Spencer and the HITmakers.) 

Bat Fangs opened the show, having been Quasi's tourmates for a few weeks, with Pittsburgh being their final night together. The trio (duo on record) describes themselves as "picking up where Roky [Erickson] and the Aliens left out - cranking acid-soaked '80s hard rock." Roky might not have been the first person that springs to mind but the band played a solid set of distorted pop that was full of layers. 

Guitarist Betsy Wright churned out chords while singing but she kick on the pedals during verses and unleashed some spot-on leads. She even did some hammering during one solo that wasn't ironic or cheesy; it elevated the song. One song later in the set inspired a howling, deep blue lead break which served as a reminder that she was playing a Gibson SG - perfect for this brand of rock.

Her bandmates also helped lift the songs. Drummer Laura King flew over her kit as if she had eight arms and she still found ample time for strong harmonies. Bassist Chrissy Tashjian, who is also in the band Thin Lips, also contributed a great deal to the strong vocal hooks, along with some solid low-end foundation. 

There was a time that Sam Coomes' lyrical outlook started to feel a little too bleak to these ears, and the comic feel of his work with the awesome Donner Party seemed to be gone. It reached a boiling point on When The Going Gets Dark (2006) in a song where listed the names of members of the then-current administration, following each name with "fuck you." 

Nowadays, Coomes still seems bleak, but the world around him has justified such feelings and the insight in his lyrics almost acts like a relief, letting the listener know that they're not alone in the muck and mire. The band's recent album, Breaking the Ball of History (if you think about it, it's not a bad idea) comes chockful of astute observations about social media, the moguls who control it and life in general. 

Quasi is still a duo - Coomes on one side of the stage with his Roxichord, or some variation thereof, and Janet Weiss (the founding drummer of Sleater-Kinney) on stage left. Put them together and their still make a powerfully loud noise and they can sustain it for upwards of 75 minutes, going from one song into the next with no break for nearly half of the set. 

The power of the music frequently inspired Coomes to lift off of his stool while he was holding down a chord. Occasionally his right knee wound up on the keys, adding a noisy drone. Half the time, he seemed to be tempting fate by shaking his instrument with the amount of force he used to strike the keys. Though it shook, it never teetered off the stand. On top of the keyboard sat some sort of red device (see the first picture) that worked like both a theremin and a Drum Buddy, the noisy instrument created by another eccentric keys man, Quintron. A hand above the device added some electronic yowls. His bank of pedals also added some disemboided tremolo guitar noise during "Queen of Ears."

Janet Weiss in action is a sight to behold. Her propulsive playing never gets excessive, but it drives the music with the perfect amount of fury. At one point during the set, she and Coomes went off into what almost sounded like a duel between Cecil Taylor and John Bonham, with a little Sun Ra thrown in. Weiss flew all over her kit, eventually leading the duo back from space into "The Rhino."

In spite of all the heaviness, Quasi is still a pop band underneath it all. Coomes knows how to write the hooks and even while she's flailing away, Weiss still has time and energy for spot-on harmonies. A band that can write a song called "Shitty Is Pretty" that leaves you humming it hours later has something going for them. The set naturally leaned heavily on the new album, kicking off with "Last Long Laugh" (with the beautiful opening line, "I was a teenage porcupine/ a bed of nails running down my spine"). "Gravity" and the observant "Doomscrollers" were also highlights on the evening. 

But they duo also pulled out some songs that went back to the late '90s albums with "California," (which required a re-start) "Under a Cloud" and the jaded "All the Same," which was anything but. Since they came this far for the first time in a while, it probably wouldn't have been a full night without a song like "You Fucked Yourself." 

Towards the end of the set, Coomes said he hoped the audience was experiencing a meltdown,  not in a bad way but more of a "psychedelic meltdown." He then apologized for his communication skills. "They're not terrible. They're more on the absurd side." He went on to say how the band usually doesn't do encores anymore, but as he tried to explain themselves, Weiss said, "We might as well just play an encore now." Whether or not the proper set was done by then, they gave us another five or six songs to make sure we had our fill. 

Everyone left happy.