The Mallard played its farewell show at the Knockout last week. Photos by Amelia Sechman.

Better than: Savages' savagery at the Independent?

Thursday night at the Knockout, Mallard leader Greer McGettrick took stage and asked the sound engineer, "Can you make it sound like I'm in a cave?" He did, but the Mallard's final performance achieved that effect itself. The urgent and clamorous set drew heavily from the Mallard's forthcoming sophomore album, but the group is now broken up and won't perform to support its release. The Mallard retreated too deeply into its cave and expired. Deprived of light and indulging darkness with dissonance and cataclysm, the band's final show affirmed the Mallard's evolution into a savage live outfit that will be dearly missed.

See also:
* S.F. Rockers the Mallard Break-Up, Announce Second Album
* The Mallard Prepares for Takeoff
* Noise Pop: The Mallard Eschews Usual Songs, Covers Throbbing Gristle Instead, 2/28/13

Better than: Passing out after an Adult Swim marathon.

It was 12:36 a.m. The iPod had been playing on an empty stage for 20 minutes now, and the restless crowd shifted uncomfortably, clearly impatient that the members of TNGHT, producers Hudson Mohawke and Lunice, were taking so long to appear. After a drug-addled day for many, the sold-out Mezzanine audience was clearly eager for an injection of energy. Suddenly, the dark stage lit up, almost painful to the many reddened eyes looking on. A slow rumbling began.

"It's those trap guys!" a bikini-clad girl exclaimed, as TNGHT finally took the stage and the crowd erupted in a roar.

Christopher Victorio

Vampire Weekend at the Fox Oakland last night.

Vampire Weekend
Tanlines
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Fox Theater, Oakland

Better than: The Vampire Diaries, Interview with the Vampire, Twilight and True Blood (but not, however, Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Vampire Weekend, punching its ticket on a short jaunt between Coachella appointments, draws an odd crowd. The audience at the cavernous and grand Fox Theater in Oakland last night cut between young girls, preppy looking dudes, comparatively older-looking young professionals, and crossed-over indie kids out for a concert on a school night.

In 2008, when Vampire Weekend released its eponymous debut, the band was like a twee-Strokes: it did for summers on Cape Cod and Paul Simon's Graceland what Julian Casablancas' squad did for the Velvet Underground and dressing like you were in the Ramones. Yeah, it's a great album, but once red-hot, slightly derivative indie bands tend to age like child stars. A few albums in and Vampire Weekend is doing whatever the musical equivalent of sending sexually explicit texts to Drake is.

Christopher Victorio

Green Day at the Greek Theatre last night.

"East Bay!" "Berkeley!" "BAY AREA!"

Billie Joe Armstrong is in a constant state of apeshit. He is onstage at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, on a warmish spring night under a glowing moon, playing for a sold-out crowd of cool dads and breathless preteens and little girls at their first concert ever. He is three miles from 924 Gilman, the Berkeley club where Green Day honed its world-dominating pop-punk in front of a whole other generation of Bay Area kids. And there's no question how he feels about it. "It's about our fucking hometown right now!" he shouts. "Oh my god, so nice to be home," he moans later.

Tonight's show will follow the template of the band's current live set -- nearly 30 songs from all over its career, over almost two and a half hours. But somehow, it's also different, and better -- because Green Day is from here, and it's obvious the band members still care a lot about that.

Franz Ferdinand in San Francisco last night.

Better than: Any basement show we've been to.

By 10 p.m. the line stretched all the way down the block. Word of an secret Franz Ferdinand show in a city basement -- an event months in the making -- had gotten out. The sidewalk line outside of Tenderloin vintage shop Vacation was kind of like a hipster purgatory: PBR tallboys en masse, tipsy chats about friends in law school, everyone wondering if they'd get in. It was further proof that these Scottish rockers, long past the apex of their hype cycle, still have a sizable, feverish fan base.

Christopher Victorio

He knows who U R: Nick Cave at Bill Graham Civic last night.

Better than: Getting murdered and/or sodomized by Stagger Lee, we're assuming.

Are there bad Nick Cave shows? We can't imagine what one would be like. What if there are only Nick Cave shows where your favorite songs get played and Nick Cave shows where other songs get played? Because what the man himself brings to the night -- and the contribution of his band, the Bad Seeds, and whomever they decide to bring along -- is, based on our admittedly limited experience, likely to be utterly intense and ravaging and a little disturbing and genuinely Nick Cave-like. In other words, great.

Last night Cave brought a children's choir, a string section, and a band of badass musicians to an ugly concrete cavern called the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, and somehow still managed to win the night. The setlist was filled with simmering tunes from his new, slower, quieter, excellent-but-somewhat-polarizing album, Push the Sky Away, including nothing from his more recent records, and yet he still managed to win the night.

Sparks at the Chapel last night.

Better than: Going all the way to Coachella to see them!

If you don't know about Sparks, here are the essentials:
- The band is led by the two Mael brothers. Ronald on keyboards and Russell on vocals.
- They have been around for 40 years and have released 22 albums, constantly growing and changing as a band.
- They are huge weirdos.

You've probably been following the Sparks coverage for the past couple weeks on this very blog, and you've probably had one of two reactions: "Who the hell are these guys?" or "YES! SPARKS! BEST BAND EVER!" You see, Sparks fans are kind of rare stateside, but the fans they do have are intensely passionate about their love for the music of The Brothers Mael.

See also:
* Sparks' Russell Mael on Playing Without a Band and the Weirdos Who Dress Up Like His Brother

Christopher Victorio

Mac DeMarco at the Independent on Monday

Even Mac DeMarco -- the grinning, beatific, 22-year-old rocker who sings about Canadian cigarettes and cooking meth -- thinks it's weird that his band is on tour opening for Phoenix. And it is: The French electro-rockers are cool and studied, keeping their anthemic pop decidedly within the lines. DeMarco, as we witnessed on Monday opening for Phoenix and last night headlining the Rickshaw Stop, is a natural proprietor of chaos, even if his guitars are clean. Why fans of one are expected to appreciate the other is unclear, even to DeMarco himself.

"We've been on tour with Phoenix, which is like this giant fucking rock band," he explained from onstage last night. "When we play with them people are usually like, 'Who the fuck is that guy?'"

Christopher Victorio

Phoenix at the Independent last night.

Better than: Watching Phoenix play on a giant LCD screen from a mile away.

Later this month, Phoenix will headline the second night of Coachella, playing for about 80,000 people. A few months after that, the band will get virtually top billing in Chicago for Lollapalooza. But last night, the French electro-rockers took over the 500-capacity Independent in San Francisco, giving the tightly crammed audience a taste of their new album at a thrillingly close range.

There won't be many stops on Phoenix's U.S. tour where singer Thomas Mars can hop offstage, wade through the throngs of fans to the far corner of the room, bask in applause, then crowd-surf his way back to the stage. But he did last night, amid a barrage of phone-camera flashes and cheers, riding over fans with mic in hand to bring Phoenix's 90-minute set to one final, elated climax.

Date Palms at Hemlock Tavern. Photos by the author.

Better than: Any number of resurrections

.

This Easter Sunday, the real blessing comes in the form of an early 
show featuring a handful of local cinematic instrumentalists inviting 
the mind to unwind. The bill follows a thoughtful arc that begins 
with the melancholy acoustic architecture of Chuck Johnson, followed
 by the lush guitar loops of Danny Paul Grody, and closes with the 
gentle power of kraut/world/post-rock ensemble (and recent Thrill
 Jockey signees) Date Palms.