The Pygmalion Festival - Friday Review

FRIDAY - Reviewed by Mary Gan, Photography by Joe MarshallThere wasn’t an open seat left in the Tryon Theater during the second night of the Pygmalion Festival, or as Mark Kozelek, the singer-songwriter of the band Sun Kil Moon calls it “The Polygamy Festival.” I hadn’t listened to much of their music besides Benji, the most recent release, but considering that it is a record that averages 1.7 deaths per track I’m expecting a mellow show.Suddenly the lights dim and there’s Sun Kil Moon on stage draped in mauve. Kozelek is sitting on the far left of the stage with his classical guitar angled between his legs while the rest of his band, consisting of a drummer, a guitarist/back up vocalist, and a keyboardist, are stacked together in a slight j curve about fifteen feet off to his right.The stage design is simple but well thought out. Kozelek’s music is deeply personal and performed with an impressive balance of passion and concentration that should not be missed for a moment. You can imagine him creating these songs alone in a room somewhere in the distant past, the supporting music always in the back of his mind during its gestation. Together with the soft lighting I was lost in his memories of failed relationships(“Dogs”), the death of his cousin (“Clarissa”), the loneliness of being on tour (“Ceiling Gazing”). Kozelek’s gruff voice overpowers the silence of the room, and the occasional feedback that buzzes out of the speakers, while the rest of the band nudges the listener deeper and deeper into to his aging soul.About halfway through, he slides the guitar off his lap and shuffles to his feet. “I’m going to be Jim Morrison now” he mumbles into the reverb laden microphone. When the music starts his hands are in his pockets and he’s pacing around the stage as if he’s waiting in line for the DMV. Half the time, his back faces the audience. The thing about Sun Kil Moon though is that they don’t want, or really even need, to be extravagant performance artists. They want you to sit down and listen to this man pour his heart out for an hour and a half like you would if you were putting on these tracks at home.  “A critic in Boston said I don’t make enough eye contact with the audience,” Kozelek says at the end of his first song sans guitar, “Now what the f*** am I supposed to do about that?”The first thing that Kozelek said, rather bluntly, when the show began was that he doesn’t want any cameras in his face. He’s notorious for calling out audience members who pull out electronic devices during his shows but being there, I could understand why. I was situated in the far right corner of the balcony, so I could see the entire theater as well as the band performing on stage. It was as if we were sitting within the chambers of Kozelek’s heart, and a single cellphone could lacerate that mellow space and let the intimacy that they work so hard to develop bleed out.There are two possible issues I could see someone having with the set. For long term fans, it would be that the band stuck to their newer material, specifically tracks from Benji. For less seasoned fans or for those who arrived to see Panda Bear, the majesty of the performance dips towards the end once you realize that there isn’t much more to expect besides the exquisitely performed music and the occasional humorous remark from Kozelek. If you can overlook those two issues, then Sun Kil Moon is absolutely worth the time. At the end of his performance, he coils up the microphone wire and looks out into the crowd. “Thank you for being so respectful. I don’t know where the f*** I am, but it seems like a nice town.”I couldn’t have asked for better parting words. Panda BearSun Kil Moon was gone, and what they left behind was a room full of people excited for what was yet to come. I saw that there wasn’t much to Panda Bear’s set-up. His equipment was propped up about waist level and took up no more than about 6 square feet, and on each side there were two small lights place about two feet away from each other. A big screen dropped down to the stage floor in and in a matter of minutes Panda Bear, a member of the well known band Animal Collective, walked out, in the center of your vision, ready to begin.Sun Kil Moon ended their set with the song “Ceiling Thoughts,” a ballad about the loneliness of being on tour and a cycle of dwelling regrets of the past, sung over a slow rhythm of guitar.Panda Bear started his set with a video of five yellow eyed naked hairless women painted red screaming “help me” at the audience on loop. I guess you could say that there was a slight change in mood.Most of the noise at this point is coming from the people around me. Some give surprised little yelps, others start laughing, this one guy repeats "holy shit?" to either his friend or himself for well over four times until I don’t hear anything but the dramatic dance beat bubbling up from the speakers. From this moment on there are no breaks in the music for banter or song changes like there were for the act that preceded it, it’s more of a steady stream of unfamiliar music most likely from Panda Bear’s upcoming album, currently under the working title of Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper. The one or two songs that I do recognize are slightly different, distorted in a way to make them fit in more with the new material. Also notable was the absence of the guitar that he usually has during live performances. His voice, which I have heard to be inconsistent in his live shows, floats nicely above the slightly funkier style of music than what he’s previously released.The video that is playing behind him, created by artist Danny Perez, is a psychedelic montage of food and skin, with an abundant use of tunnel vision transitions in between. Everything is very bright and very bold, save for the rare moments when the music slows down, concealing darker themes that are meant to discomfort the viewer. The distorted images of rotting food that morph into photos of a mouth covered in sprinkles that morphs into the grim reaper waving a closed fist at you over an over, for example, doesn’t feel like it was created with the intention of telling a story or message but instead disclose a passage into this new twisted sci-fi world that Panda Bear, otherwise known by his real name Noah Lennox, has created during his years of inactivity as a solo artist. And then there’s the strobe.If you suffer from epilepsy I strongly suggest that you avoid watching Panda Bear live because of his incessant use of strobe light.  Never before had I seen so many walkouts at a sold out performance. In between in the cuts of darkness during the moments where the flash lit up the room, I could see people leaving in packs, many blaming the discomfort they suffered from the strobe light. Personally, I felt that at its best moments the lighting synced with the music and the video to hypnotize the viewer. I was entranced by it in a way that no performance has ever done for me before, but when those moments passed and there was a brief halt in its usage I could feel a sensation of relief flood my face. That’s the biggest defense I can make for the effect, because it made it overloaded my senses to the point where I could not think of anything but what was happening. There was no space for my mind to wander.At the end, he briefly thanks the audience for coming and walks off the stage. The entire row in front of me is nearly empty, as are several others presumably full of people who were not into the psychedelic vibe or were expecting something closer to Sun Kil Moon. Which makes me want to know who in the right mind scheduled them together. Whether or not you love it or hate it, this is a show that will not be forgotten anytime soon.