Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra will be playing at the Pearl Street Theater at 9 p.m. tonight. Giraffes? Giraffes!, the Massachusetts math-rock duo, will open the event. The show will be $17 at the door and $14 for advance tickets.
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – occasionally referred to as the Tra-La-La-Band – is a somewhat popular act among the contemporary post-rock scene from Montreal. Despite the band refuting such a categorization as post-rock, it is usually labeled as such because of its advanced chamber rock, daunting techniques and talent and inspiration. The group is also generalized because of its close relation to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a collective that also features several of the musicians from the Memorial Orchestra. However, these two bands should be seen as mutually exclusive, or at least, that’s how the bands want one to see it.
The group’s de facto leader, Efrim Menuck, made it clear on the band’s website that the group subscribes to an anarchist-punk aesthetic, citing Minor Threat and Black Flag as influences. One look at this band and one would much more comfortably call it a folk outfit. But when one hears the drone of one of its 13-minute epic sonic battles, one would be unable to say the band is akin to Joan Baez.
But it is unfair to say it is not part of either camp. Mt. Zion, when on stage, seems to be a band both fundamental and progressive, the bluegrass of an untilled and reckless lawn. The members form, with layered dissonance, a focused string section with multiple violins, cellos, guitars and basses that sounds like the crashing of some hidden log cabin far out in the mist – something more like death.
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra has expanded and contracted over the 12 years of its existence. The sonic conception of each of the Mt. Zion albums, of which there are six, is similar, but has had nuanced changes in tone, performance, vocals and instrumentation. The group’s 2010 album, “Kollaps Tradixionales” featured five musicians, a slim ensemble compared to the nine members seen prior. How many will be on stage is unsure, but one thing is certain: they will all sing.
And if Mt. Zion is the crashing death of a house that punk built, then Giraffes? Giraffes! is the life. Encapsulating a combination of disorientation and deliberation, this opening act is bound to impress even the most obtuse of mathematicians. Since the group’s advent in 2005, this lively duo has made music that values the surreal, the spirited and the silly. The band plays, as its website describes, in “hits and taps” and “taps and hits.”
Together, the show tonight looks to cross some boundaries in terms of genre. It also looks like it might get loud.
Brian T. Folan can be reached at [email protected].
