Local Spins music critic John Serba absorbed the brutish, wonderful ‘apelike rock’ of the iconic L.A. punk/metal/grunge band at The Pyramid Scheme on Monday. Read his take on the rock ‘n’ roll assault.
Raucous, Simple, Tight: L7 on stage at The Pyramid Scheme on Monday. (Photo/Katy Batdorff)
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Experiencing L7 live is to voluntarily renounce articulate expression for 80 minutes – maybe more if you account for the refractory period. To determine whether the band is punk or metal or rock or grunge while your face is ball-peened with guitar riffs is to fight whitewater rapids with a dog paddle.
It’s best just to curl your lip back and snarl along with the coarse sentiments, put your back into a righteous headbang, and feel the relief of release when it ends.
Wonderfully Scathing: L7 in Grand Rapids. (Photo/Katy Batdorff)
Before I get to more obligatory hyperbole, some context for L7’s existence in 2018: The band came of age in the 1990s, when its brand of bludgeoning, laconic thrash could be polished just enough to get a whiff of mainstream success. (It really was a strange time for popular music.)
By 2001, as these things go, it had run its course. Also as these things go, a reunion happened in 2015. Also also as these things go, nobody got younger during that time, but L7’s brutish, apelike rock aged extraordinarily well, perhaps because life in any sort of sphere of political awareness has become more brutish and apelike as well.
The hiatus was wise; the band dodged all claims of irrelevance, and returned lean, loud and vicious. Case in point, L7’s performance at The Pyramid Scheme Monday night. It was the work of a veteran band unashamed to sneer like disaffected youth, and therefore performing its by-turns jokey and angry material with sincerity and conviction.
Of course, the club wasn’t quite sold out. About 400 people attended, which means about 20 more could have, but obviously effed up.
Backed by replacement drummer JoDee Locks – kit mainstay Dee Plakas is sitting out the tour with a broken arm – singer/guitarists Donita Sparks and Suzi Gardner and singer/bassist Jennifer Finch opened the set with rumbler “Andres,” followed by the expeditious punk of “Fast and Frightening” (probably the best thing L7 ever wrote). The two songs set the tone for a show filling the spectrum between slow-stupid and fast-stupid, all of it inspiring and stupid, all of it played tight and smart, but also stupid.
THE BARE IRON BONES OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL — AND A NOD TO THE PYRAMID SCHEME
I say “stupid” because “minimalist” suggests contrivance. Nothing about L7 on The Pyramid Scheme stage was contrived. They played some chords, strung them into riffs, hit the snare hard, and yelled a lot. Those are the bare iron bones of rock ‘n’ roll.
If you want to coat it with the nostalgia of hearing the jaunty riff and half-asleep slacker vocal of “Pretend You’re Dead” – deployed during the encore, to many cheers – on the radio in 1993, that’s your prerogative. Just keep in mind, your youth is gone, but your reptile brain lives on, and forever enjoys three chords and a cloud of dust.
Coming Back to Bitch: And play guitars so loud that it hurts. (Photo/Katy Batdorff)
The band’s appeal lies in that directness. L7’s collective heart beats with the affably moronic qualities of Venom and the crisp punch of AC/DC, tuned down to the key of F-you. “One More Thing” almost exhibited some ambition in its loping main riff. The primary section of “Deathwish” has two chords, and the second one seems accidental. A new song, a scathing ode to Donald Trump titled “Dispatch from Mar-a-Lago,” offered some defective boogie-woogie blues with a fall-apart bridge that pretty much accurately reflects the demented state of The American Way, 2018.
Sparks succinctly addressed the question as to why the band reformed: “I came back to bitch,” she said. Then the band played “I Came Back to Bitch,” the title rhyming nicely with the line, “Everything is going to shit.” Consider the point made, effectively.
Further description would simply be me hitting the thesaurus for antonyms for “sludge.” Instead, I’ll say “Shove,” “Scrap,” “Everglade,” “Monster” and wonderfully scathing show-closer “Shitlist” were highlights because they’re low blows, unapologetically raucous and simple.
The Quirk (Photo/Katy Batdorff)
In the ’90s, L7 surely played every place with a horrible toilet between here and Osaka. (Yes, that’s how those things went, and usually still go.) Sparks felt inclined to compliment the Pyramid Scheme on its cleanliness: “You guys should be very thankful that this club exists… it’s a cool one,” she said, noting its “lack of penis graffiti,” surely an anomaly. She then helped fill the room with the sounds of a guitar turned up so loud it distorts. While many things around us change, it’s comforting to know that rock ‘n’ roll stays the same.
Opening the show was The Quirk, a young Grand Rapids four-piece with harsh, trebly guitars and punkish vocals by lead singer Bek Graham. They fit the evening’s bill with a ’90s-influenced musical aesthetic, and often sounded like a forgotten band from the heyday of indie labels Touch and Go and Merge.
John Serba is a veteran film and rock critic, formerly of MLive.com and The Grand Rapids Press. Read his current work at johnserbaatlarge.com, and listen to his Bullshit Old Guy Metal podcast here.
PHOTO GALLERY: L7, The Quirk at The Pyramid Scheme
Photos by Katy Batdorff
