If you’re reading this article and you didn’t make it to the American Draft record release show last Saturday at The Burlington, you done goofed. You done goofed hard. But, there’s hope for you yet! Reading this recap may give you the impetus necessary to get to their next show, whenever that might be. The band measures their tenure in decades, not years, that’s all I’m saying – keep an eye out and don’t pass up a chance to see one of the most engaging live acts I’ve witnessed this year.

Job

Opening the show was the pun-vulnerable JOB, a three-piece that put out their first full-length earlier this year, Meaningless (which I reviewed here). They also opened for American Draft bassist Jeff Wojtysiak’s other band, Cokegoat, earlier this year, and somehow their brand of aggressively rhythm-devoted instrumental rock fits just as well on both bills.

For me, watching Jim Myers take the simplest components of his drumkit – the kick drum, snare and hi-hat – and fuse them into absurdly intricate grooves is the highlight of a JOB performance. Jim possesses absolute mastery over these critical elements – his foot technique borders on the superhuman, crafting single-note basslines to give the music a thumping low-end whenever Otto Junker puts down the bass to play one of his numerous, numerous other instruments.

Otto skipped the keyboard this time, but he still had, roughly, five guitars plus a little travel guitar slung on his back to juggle between, which took surprisingly little time to sort out when he had to make a swap.

Just like the last time I saw them, Job opts for a semi-circular stage positioning, playing to each other and not the audience, picking up on subtle cues to transition into new segments of musical madness that call to mind thoughts of King Crimson at their most intense.

Talking with Bill Myers after their set, I discovered that he runs his keyboards through a set of amps that are more than just straight PA-style power amps – they have different colors to their sounds and are dialed in differently. So, when he switches around the plugs on his keyboards between songs, he’s changing up the sound of his rig so that each keyboard gets the particular tone that fits the song better.

JOB’s song titles and general mannerisms are somewhat a tongue-in-cheek affair, but they’ve artfully structured their set as a full-on performance, not just some songs played one after another. They might have had a new song literally called “New Song”, but they also filled gaps between songs with looping bits and ended the whole set with a dense crescendo of sound.

The Mons

By glancing at the significant length of The Mons’ setlist, I gathered I was either in for a punk band or a much, much later night than I’d planned for. It was the first one, of course, and they wasted no time getting into their abundant material.

The Mons radiate a sort of masterful indifference, an aura which only a punk band with years of experience can truly achieve: debating what song they should play next may just be an entertaining bit between songs, but there’s no doubt they could go off-script without any serious heartburn as well.

There’s also an oddly endearing sense of a coherent brand directly at odds with the casual appearance of the band – their stringed instrument lineup might feature a Warlock,a Les Paul and a Telecaster, but it all fits together somehow with a unified, cheerful vibe. On Facebook, each band member is attributed the last name ‘Mons’ – unsure if that’s a legal alteration or not, but they certainly felt close knit regardless. It felt like a group of friends playing to other friends – maybe it wasn’t a de facto house party, but it had the same atmosphere.

Both Karl (on the Telecaster) and and d.d. (aka Little Dave) on bass aided in vocals, but Matt is the primary vocalist, pulling off shouts, nasally cleans and parts bordering on spoken word throughout the set. The rest of the band can change tacks as well, drummer Andy helping Scott (Les Paul) in laying down riffs and generally ransacking their way through the audience’s ear canals.

They closed off with a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Never Say Die”, which I wouldn’t have expected to work as a punk cover – but, it does, and it’s always nice to see bands break out the nonstandard Sabbath covers. Guys, please do Headless Cross next – thanks.

Drilling for Blasting

I half expected this two piece to be a grind band, going by the name, but as with most of my poorly-sourced guessing, that, uh, wasn’t quite it. No blasting here, rather, there’s comparisons to be made to early The Black Keys material, with a similar stripped-down approach to rock.

Guitarist/vocalist Douglas Ward cranked out bluesy, foot-tapping licks and pulling off a throaty roar that reminds me a bit of Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi with an Americana flair to it. His guitar was slung so low I had some challenges getting it in the same frame as his face – add that to his imposing stature and you get a uniquely memorable stage presence. Despite the rugged-looking gear, he also used a looping pedal at a few points (which is tough when you’ve got a drummer who needs to follow it too) and even broke out a harmonica while using it.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a nice and proper wood block on a drumset – Kammy Lee had a robust one mounted on her kit, plus a hearty cowbell. They were used more as accents than core elements, but I guess not every song in existence calls for a gratuitous cowbell groove.

Kammy’s playing sticks to the fundamentals, often breaking down just to kick and snare to provide a backbeat to Douglas’s room-filling guitar tone and vocals before falling back into full-kit parts. The pair is fully synchronized and locked in, obviously having fun on stage and in their element.

A few songs in, Douglas’s amp faltered and stopped them halfway through a song. Carl from the Mons lent them an alternate, humorously oversized Hiwatt to try out, but to no avail – they started the song up and stopped just as suddenly. Kammy suggested the Mothman was behind it, which is just as viable as any other theory.

Some number of amp and cabinet switches later, they were back in business and back to jamming just as skillfully as before, unfazed, if of course annoyed, by the technical shenanigans. They wrapped up their set minus a few numbers to account for the delays, keeping the night’s timeline intact.

American Draft

American Draft’s approach to their record release show was simple: play the album they’re releasing, start to finish. Excellent news for those of us, like me, who had heard the album and loved every second of it. Even better news for me – the red lighting was replaced by custom visuals from Justin Howard (@nordicthunder), who had filmed strange gooey scenes and spent the set VJing them on top of the band. Red light’s cool in person, but it’s also really hard to photograph, and this was my first time shooting a band with this kind of effect. A memorable night visually, for sure, but the music was the star of the show.

Seeing American Draft play The Rescue live helped define the album for me and put it into more concrete terms. On record, it can be hard to understand how the different elements came together and it was daunting for me to think about how it might be played live – there’s so many swirling elements and twisting parts that amazed me when listening at home, but how would it come across live? The answer – even better. It’s almost obvious how the songs come together with the talent and playstyles of each member, and it makes it that much more familiar when I go back to listen to the record again. Every member of the band executed their parts flawlessly and the towering compositions they created came to life almost viscerally: there’s something about watching Matt Precin extract himself from his drumset to head over to the keyboard to set up an interlude, or chug a beer in a pause in a song, that grounds the complex structures for me.

There’s two attitudes at play in American Draft – stoic serenity and exuberance. Jeff Wojtysiak and Mike Baldwin were lost in a world of their own for the most part, quietly executing their parts with impeccable technicality and just enough soulfulness, but Matt and Sean Shipley were more emotional, moving as the music directed them. Near the end of the set, as the title track reached its zenith, I think I detected a hint of a smile on Jeff’s face, but I don’t have any photographic evidence of it.

American Draft is a battle-tested, refined group of musicians, and that’s obvious from their cohesiveness from the start. As Solace of Light started up, Sean hit an issue with his rig (in the same cursed location as Douglas earlier), but the rest of the band kept the song going with just a hand motion and a word from Jeff – Sean fixed it in a few seconds anyway. Mike and Matt traded off on the keyboard without any confusion as to who was going to do what when and not a hint of a rough transition at any point.

Some of this record is just stunning to witness live from a technical standpoint – Sean busts out an absurd double-tapping part on ‘Blood Meridian’ that was already the highlight of the album version for me, and for some of the neater bass parts on ‘Solace of Light’, a track that conjures warm fuzzy feelings of Yes – Relayer, Jeff does some bass tap-work of his own, but more to pull a certain tone out of the string.

Jeff’s shadow kept watch on drummer Matt for most of the show.

There’s a drum fill halfway through ‘The Rescue’ that’s especially notable: an intricate flurry leading out of a drumless section into the climax of the song. Just prior to it, I saw Matt sort of miming out the fill’s motion, but it just looked like a soundless blur – and then, right on cue, he unleashed it on his set. It’s a good goddamn fill, folks, and hearing/witnessing Matt’s drumming live is something to remember: no part of his kit is off limits, and he’ll craft grooves that shouldn’t work, but they do, going from cymbal to cymbal effortlessly and creating a compelling push and pull without repeating himself.

I left a few surprises from the record out of my review just to preserve the surprise for readers – one of those was the fact that there are, actually, vocals on this album. They’re only present for a brief moment in the last third of the final track, but they’re there, and the fact that they’re used sparingly increases their magnitude a hundredfold. Imagine my surprise to realize that while I was up front taking photos, the vocalist (Sacha Mullin) was right behind me, something I discovered when he tapped on my shoulder to let me know I’d need to let him get on the stage in a few minutes, which I was more than willing to do after excitedly congratulating him.

Objectively, he might be an unlikely pick for American Draft, but to say that it worked well would be an understatement – Sacha’s brief, melodic vocal passage on The Rescue is certainly the best moment of the album and a highlight of the live show. Fundamentally changing the sound of the music for such a brief period of time is a ballsy move from American Draft that paid off, and hopefully they’re not getting angry messages from instrumental rock purists for it.

Music doesn’t always “stick” to me – there’s definitely plenty of bands I’ve seen live that I’ve heard albums from and had a hard time connecting song names to the performances. But for American Draft, I knew every song and I knew where they were in each song, which, given they’re instrumental, says a lot about how well written their songs are. If you listen to this band, you’ll remember it. Seeing them live was an energizing and emotional experience, and I’m going to do my best to do it again sometime.

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Thanks for reading! Make sure to check out my review of The Rescue by American Draft as well.

