Black Helicopter reach a higher plane of rock
By MATT ASHARE | September 5, 2006
BLACK INDEED: This isn’t beer-drinking music — this is music you drink whiskey to. |
It’s a Thursday night at the Abbey Lounge and the Konks are on stage, kicking out the jams old-school garage-punk style. Nobody’s really dancing, but the mood is raucous and there’s an upbeat energy in the room. This is music you drink beer to. And once you’ve had enough beer, well, maybe you dance. So the Konks do their thing, break down their gear, towel off, and hit the bar. Meanwhile, a very different kind of band take the stage. Tall Tim Shea, with his angular features, distorted guitar, and deep, brooding eyes, stands to one side. His foil across the stage, Jeff Iwanicki, keeps a firm hold on his guitar, as if it were threatening to unleash something dangerous. And big, bearded bassist Zach Lazar plants his feet somewhere in between so as not to block anyone’s view of the guy behind the drums, Matt Nicholas. Zach’s drinking a beer. But once Black Helicopter hit their stride, they’re darker, heavier, more severe than the Konks. This isn’t beer-drinking music: this is music you drink whiskey to. Neat. Drink enough and you might come upon one of the abysses Shea has looked into or meet up with one of the ghosts that haunt his songs. On second thought, you may want to stick to beer.“It’s that classic New England heavy thinking man’s rock,” is how Sonic Youth guitarist and Northampton resident Thurston Moore puts it. He’s also the guy who felt strongly enough about Invisible Jet, Black Helicopter’s second album, to release it on his Ecstatic Peace label. “It’s really overdriven but with this sincere sense of melody going on. I mean, I really dig Tim’s sense of melody and his delivery. When I first heard it, I equated it with the best parts of bands like Mission of Burma and Dinosaur Jr. I was kind of taken aback. I get a million CDs, but I played it [the Invisible Jet demos] in my car and I was completely blown away. It’s just totally that sound that I love.”
The four members of Black Helicopter (who play T.T. the Bear’s Place on September 12) have been kicking around for more than a decade, writing, recording, and playing in various bands and learning how to balance life in the real world of work, wives, kids, and the rest with the pain-in-the-ass thrill of making music. Their common denominator is Green Magnet School, one of those once-upon-a-time Boston bands who touched on greatness often enough to score a deal with Sub Pop in the early ’90s. Along with bonding with Sub Pop’s other dark and twisted New England band, Six Finger Satellite (home, back then, to DFA favorite the Juan Maclean), they toured with an often amusing art-damaged post-punk outfit called Kudgel. Keeping track of who was in which band on which tour is something they apparently gave up on long ago. They’re not even sure exactly when Black Helicopter emerged from the Green Magnet School/Kudgel alliance. (“We became Black Helicopter around the turn of the century” is as close as it gets.) What is clear to everyone is that they’d worked through whatever issues needed to be worked through before Black Helicopter formed, and they’d found a common purpose in the band. At least, that’s the impression I get when we all sit down for drinks and dinner at the B-Side Lounge a couple of weeks after the Abbey gig.
Related:
Boston in Austin, Moore on the fringe, Rare Frequencies: Callithumpian Consort, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace, More 
- Boston in Austin
There were 26 bands from Massachusetts in Austin last week to play the South by Southwest music conference Black Helicopter, "Buick Electra" (mp3)
- Moore on the fringe
Name-dropping has never been a favorite pastime on this page, but something came up in an interview I had with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore last week that I wanted to pass along.
- Rare Frequencies: Callithumpian Consort, Thurston Moore and Bill Nace
Although composer JOHN CAGE is best known for 4'33" of silence, he could raise a ruckus when the mood struck.
- Dropping by with an old friend
Even before there were festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties to formalize the concept, Sonic Youth have always given off a curatorial air.
- On the racks
Nelly Furtado, Frank Black, Pearl Jam, Fatboy Slim, and Luna.
- Boston music news: September 21, 2007
For the better part of a decade,Chris Brokaw was best known as Thalia Zedek’s guitar foil in the local band Come.
- Trees outside the museum
Video: Thurston Moore live at the MFA
- Lotta-palooza
This article originally appeared in the August 14, 1992 issue of the Boston Phoenix .
- Magic numbers
“I like that Stone Roses song,” one of them noted. “You know the one I mean — ‘I Wanna Be a Door.’ ”
- Fallout joys
In his newly published The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll , Phoenix contributor Brett Milano explores the evolution of the local music scene.
- The 40 greatest concerts in Boston history: 33
Lollapalooza 1995 | Tweeter Center | July 25, 1995
- Less
Topics:
Music Features
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, More
, Entertainment, Music, Pop and Rock Music, Beverages, Food and Cooking, Liquor and Spirits, Punk Rock, Lou Barlow, Mission of Burma, Sonic Youth, Less
