LIVE JOURNAL 10/16: Antonioni’s Final Show @ Tractor Tavern

I know, these pictures are less than ideal. I will get a real camera soon, I promise.

Bands, like everything, end all the time. Many bands operate like chosen dysfunctional families communicating beyond language, which is to say language fails them on occasion.

It’s no longer all simmering resentments and incongruous musical directions though. Now more than ever, it’s tough to be in band that isn’t selling out major venues and successfully paying off mortgages with tour earnings. Every practice session is time spent either on top of or in place of a workday, shows are less dependable investments than calculated expenses, and every song is solely a product of devotion committed in virtue. Granted, underground scenes have always been like this, but in rent-hiked cities like Seattle, such scenes are fast becoming untenable.

Even though Sarah Pasillas expounded briefly as she said her goodbyes on the stage of the Tractor Tavern, it’s still exactly unclear why Antonioni decided to call it quits. As if an explanation were required though: all the sizable crowd wanted was to pay their respects to the years-long local staple, an air of finality enhancing the shimmering insularity of their songs. The band encouraged their audience beforehand to come in costume given Halloween’s impending arrival, and they themselves took to the stage in denim, sequins and fringe as a country act. The sentiment was jocular, but it also bore a residual poignancy. As the band played, orange and crimson lights descended behind like the end of a western, illuminating Pasillas wide-brimmed hat and shaggy hair as she stood in clear contentment. One last opportunity, if you will, to showcase their power before riding their steeds into the sunset.

We’ll get into that in a sec. Let’s talk about the rest of the show first.

All thoughts are mine; all experiences are mine. If you don’t like it, you can go [commit some covert burglary at Spirit of Halloween, for I have been informed there are no cameras.]

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BREAD PILOT

Of the three acts invited as openers, this is the one I was least familiar with. After having seen them, I want to get a hell of a lot more familiar with them.

The four-piece confidently straddle the line between folk and rock, with nostalgic slowcore-inspired numbers graced with an autumnal easiness. They’re exquisitely difficult to pin down, turning up the volume and the energy in one moment and then breaking out into delicate three-part harmonies in another.

This is evident from their last studio project, a five-song EP that captures the engrossing mercuriality of their music. Led by an upper-tempo number called “Munkee,” the EP runs the gamut from gentle indie pop to expansive acoustic to star-dusted rock. Combined with a pair of songs released in 2019 and a lo-fi recording of demos from their excellent 2015 self-titled debut, the band has fourteen recorded songs to their name, and there’d better be more to come or I’m actually gonna throw a fit.

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DUSTY

Antonioni weren’t the only band issuing farewells at the Tractor that night. Mike Sampson’s versatile trio, who’ve I’ve caught in numerous places over the last few years, also tragically played their penultimate set here. As expected, it was a burner. Dusty, like Bread Pilot before them, also plays at a crossroads: between lively alternative rock, classic country rock and spitfire punk with Sampson’s even voice soaring over it all. Given their sole release (a full-length released in 2017 that isn’t available on most streaming services) they present themselves primarily as a live band, which would be obvious anyway. You simply need to go see this band live, and since there’s only one show left for them to play, let’s make it a mandate.

Just as back in 2018 during their set at the Victory Lounge, I found myself intrigued by Sampson’s banter as much as his playing. Between songs he would speak at such a rapid pace I could only catch bits and pieces of what he was saying, as if he were reciting a stand-up album at double speed. Meanwhile he stayed stony-faced until the band kicked in, his dispassionate demeanor such a constant that it probably wouldn’t have changed if the crowd were ten times the size.

But if Sampson could help but draw attention during the dead air, the pair supporting him during the songs made quite the mark; bassist Joe Holcomb wore an ineradicable grin as he bounced and burned through the set, while Dylan Ramsey’s powerhouse drumming (especially on “Kill a Hotel”) supplied a huge part of the band’s power. And then it was over and Dusty kicked up a dust cloud, very nearly at the end of their tenure.

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BEVERLY CRUSHER

Beverly Crusher have been all over Seattle lately; I feel like I’ve seen their name constantly show up on venue events and festival lineups over the last few months. There’s a good chance you’ve already bore witness to this trio’s brand of blood-rush punk before, but if you haven’t, your excuses are fast dwindling.

Frontman Cozell Wilson, whose body might be majority pumpkin spice at this point, looked like he was having an absolute blast on stage. The torrent of live shows he and his bandmates have been playing of late has likely helped fine-tune his showmanship; wielding a see-through guitar studded with LEDs that refracted the lights behind him, he stood precariously on speakers, balanced on monitors and donned clothes from the audience when available. Drummer Sam Stiles may have been the only person who could have one-upped him, bashing on the drums with the enthusiasm of a sugar-addled tyke with enough energy by the end to perform a final somersault before the last crash.

I’m always taken by the way Wilson plays guitar. The man shreds like a chainsaw, but one with a few teeth ripped out. Rather than a clean and over-rehearsed set of solos, he plays with a wild abandon that enhances the thrill of the moment. It also gives him more of an opportunity to feed off of the crowd, who were more than ready to turn the floor into a writhing series of bodies. I have little doubt their upcoming set at Freakout Fest is gonna be one for the books.

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ANTONIONI

Sometimes when you watch a band or an artist pick up their instruments for the last time, you can sense they feel conflicted about the decision. There’s a reticence embedded in the way they throw themselves into their songs, wringing them for meaning despite the hundreds of practice hours that have undoubtedly staled them over the years.

But what struck me most about Antonioni’s last show was that such reticence felt counterbalanced by an acceptance – on the band’s part at least – that this ending was the right call. The bits of acknowledgment Pasillas gave between songs, during which she thanked her bandmates as well as the people who helped bring them to places most local bands normally don’t inhabit, were also punctuated by affirmations signaling she was ready to hang up the name.

“I really don’t want to sound rude,” she said near the end, “but I’m gonna be happy when people are looking at me on stage anymore.” She accompanied this admission with a brief aside that she was still writing songs, inferring another possible direction that may not involve live performances. But even in the hypothetical absence of her words there would still be that peaceful smile that crept over her right as “Stutter Step” kicked off the set, as if she were reveling in the last few minutes of an unbearably long workweek.

The set’s relative brevity supported this – I may have had a few G&Ts warping my grasp of time, but the band couldn’t have played more than eight songs – but it featured the band at their absolute lean best. They ripped through several tracks off of their recent self-titled swan song with an apropos heft, guitarist Austin Dean in particular basking fully in the power of his melodious riffs, his eyes closed behind his plastic heart sunglasses. Ben Dorcy swung and swaggered beside Pasillas while Mike Sampson, who’s been occupying the drums over the last year, got the opportunity to participate in two goodbyes over one night.

Together they made a meal out of the anthemic “Mouth Breather,” rattled though “Mary Bell” and pulled a fitting catharsis out of “Shiver.” The set closed with the muted “Puck,” which eventually built into a roaring send-off, and then it was over. Pasillas firmly asserted there would be no encore, which in this era is a gift to the audience – many of us had service jobs to work the next day. There’s no question the band certainly deserved one though, and as the band unplugged while the crowd chanted against their wishes, a light bittersweetness settled like the end of a long-held breath. Now, at last, release.