CMJ: Wednesday

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Pitchfork
October 23, 2008
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Photos by Francis Chung ; Above: Beach House

Hello Saferide [The Bowery Electric; 8 p.m.]






















Sweden churns out pop singers and songwriters like I blow my nose, but Hello Saferide 's Annika Norlin is one of the best. The Stockholm-based songstress's 2005 debut, Introducing Hello Saferide , was packed with catchy, funny, and tenderly heartfelt story-songs that could appeal to almost anyone. Her Swedish-language album last year under the name Säkert! showed that Norlin's brightly colored guitar-pop had hooks even if you couldn't understand the words. The just-released More Modern Short Stories From Hello Saferide shows Norlin continuing to develop her knack for tuneful, narrative-driven songs that can pack an emotional wallop, even as producer Andreas Mattsson couldn't resist an (understandable) urge to pretty things up a bit.


Even during a free, no-badges-required showcase during happy hour ("$4 drinks!"), Hello Saferide's music and stories carried. The transition from the low-key indie pop of Introducing to the polished rock of More Modern Short Stories makes more sense live, when you realize: Hello Saferide are a band now. Norlin was joined by a four-piece backing band that included multi-instrumentalist Mattsson as well as guitar, backing vocals, and harmonica by Firefox AK, who also played a shy but impressive opening set as a sort of one-woman New Order. (Another opener, Juvelen, was similarly compelling as a one-man Prince, pulling off the difficult task of getting people to dance at 7:30 p.m.; I suspect they were Swedes, though.)

Hello Saferide played a stirring, increasingly confident set of songs from the new album, from heartbreaking first single "Anna" to the theatrical, keyboard-based "Overall", in which a couple try to figure out where they went wrong in raising their neo-Nazi son. A rapt hush fell over all but the buzzily networking crowd back by the bar. Between songs, Norlin offered brief, genial commentary, putting her tunes in context for the unfamiliar. "I'm sorry for talking so much, but I'm going to tell you one more story," she said at one point. For the encore, Introducing 's achingly exposed romantic questionnaire "The Quiz", the whole room clapped along.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow [Knitting Factory Tap Bar; 10:30 p.m.]


 

For a minute it looked like endless problems with the monitors might put a cloud over A Sunny Day in Glasgow 's set. The Philadelphia four-piece have gotta be a headache for sound guys, with their heavy use of reverb and samplers, but their debut album, Scribble Mural Comic Journal , was one of 2007's most criminally overlooked releases: billowy shoegaze for people who like their Twilight Sad with less U2 and more C86, or with less balls and a little more oceanic femininity. Robin Daniels sent her sing-song vocals echoing around the fluffy feedback clouds like the wraiths of dead children. Eventually, the technical issues-- which weren't a problem from our end, anyway-- somehow got resolved, and a Sunny Day in Glasgow's best songs, like "5:15 Train", and "C'Mon", left me wishing they had more of them. The next band, New York's the Pains of Being Pure at Heart, also overcame monitor problems for a really solid set of screeching, shoegaze-tinted indie-pop with echoes of beloved, largely forgotten 1990s bands like Rocketship or Madison Electric.


Beach House [Le Poisson Rouge; 12:30 a.m.]




Beach House 's Devotion is my favorite 2008 album to fall asleep to. The Baltimore band's set started promptly about 23 minutes past midnight. You do the math. But their organ-shimmering gothic love dirges were no snooze: Victoria Legrand's rich, deep voice toyed with the dreamy refrains of songs from both Devotion and 2006's self-titled album as if she were a lover, a torturer, or some kind of dark magician, while Alex Scally traced out rippling guitar patterns, equal parts ominous and sensuous. A live drummer helped lead Beach House toward morning, particularly on the thumping, folkier "Used to Be", an echoey new single wracked with a long-distance lover's doubts. Finale "Gila"-- introduced as "an old song," or at least old as in "six months ago"-- showed once again that yes, there are hooks amid all those echoey atmospheres. And pleasant dreams.