This show was at Work/Sound, and before I continue, allow me to start things off by saying the following:

1. Work/Sound's nonexistent security severely needs some sort of buffer.
2. Work/Sound's nonexistent security caused me to miss out on hearing my favorite Dan Deacon track, on what he claims to be his “last tour for a long time”.

That said, outside the venue is a nice, clean space. Upon entering, I was asked if I was drinking. When I said no, I was adorned with a frowny face drawn in Sharpie on my right wrist. As this is an all-ages venue, I immediately wondered if the OLCC was going to kick down the door and start handing out fines.

Inside, the venue looked like it was advertised: an artist's community of some sort. In one wing sits a bevy of woodchips swallowing an otherwise out-of-place park bench. The other wing contains a solitary television. The center chamber holds a whole lot of view-blocking pillars and some very meat-and-potatoes décor; comprised of mostly white wood and painted concrete. At the front of the space, a tiny stage puts the performers just barely above the audience. This is obviously a joint where performance is meant to connect with the patrons on a more personal level than say, Roseland.

I was told the act performing inside was indeed Nuclear Power Pants, and really, it looked all Portland up in there. The sole dude onstage was dancing across pedals while playing a guitar and banging on a glockenspiel. While he finished his dirge, I looked around to see most of the crowd sitting down. On the screen behind the man was an animation that smacked of Adobe Aftereffects. Upon finishing the current song, he announced that he was actually Alexis Gideon.

Now, to be honest, I didn't care all too much; frankly, the song that was playing when I entered the video was pretty awful. It was slow and uneventful, highlighted by seemingly random notes of glockenspiel banged out of tempo and harmoniously discordant with everything else going on at the time. However, when Gideon launched into his next tune, the synthesis of his act really hit me.

Flat out, Gideon's vocal range is incredible both in octaval expression and in versatility. Using his loop pedal, he created a convoluted hiphop beat and proceeded to slice in both verse and hook in completely different keys and octaves. His live performance clearly is not one to be walked in on in the middle, but one to be savored from the very beginning. When going to see Alexis Gideon, don't talk; just listen.

Unbeknownst to myself, the five serape-clad men wandering around the venue were actually Nuclear Power Pants; the real deal and not a mistakenly-identified opening act. Taking the stage with three female backup singers, they started off a little rockily. Most of the people in NPP wore large cardboard masks with giant pink teeth and eyes as they thrashed about on their respective instruments, but perhaps the most enjoyable thing about NPP's entire stage show was that their “logo” bears a striking resemblance to Starfucker's new name/logo, “PYRAMIDDD”. I laughed when I realize that Starfucker's attempt at selling out was going to result in a whole lot of extra work for them. I am of the opinion that if any band should have to struggle extra, it's Starfucker.

NPP featured a man on a keytar, with another band member writhing about on the floor, solely in charge of tweaking the knobs on the keytarist's Moog ring modulator. To me, this is like being the guy in the Mighty Mighty Bosstones who is in charge of dancing. As an owner and operator of several effects pedals, I'm well aware that no pedal requires a dedicated operator. NPP closed their set out with a song that ran well over the fifteen minute mark that was about Ripley from James Cameron's Alien series.

After a crew of five men helped Dan Deacon move a giant wall of speakers previously thought to be part of the venue's décor, he was ready to go. Seeming to feed off the fuse that NPP and Alexis Gideon had failed to ignite previously, Deacon fired immediately into Red F, and the audience lost their collective shit. Within seconds, there were crowd surfers kicking me in the face and I was trying to wrench their shoes off in anonymous retribution. After a couple more songs from 2007's Spiderman of the Rings, Dan began one of his signature pre-song audience interactions. Getting everyone to disperse into the form of a huge circle around the venue, he asked everyone to fall to one knee. He then selected a random audience member to lead an “interpretive dance” to Of the Mountains. Later, he would go on to organize a dance contest between two competing halves of the room, set to a new song whose name is a jumbled pile of consonants.

While this is all good and well, the low point of the evening was during the second to last song of the night, Baltihorse. Whilst the tune played out, Deacon instructed that the participants formed a steeple/tunnel, and the rest of the crowd was to run under the human structure and continue the gauntlet all the way out the door. The fabrication was to follow a complicated series of directions and eventually wind up back inside the venue. However, a ruckus was brewing outside that involved a tunnel member fondling girls as they walked by. Deacon and NPP members were understandably displeased, and no effort was made to extract the groper from the premises. After a heated microphone exchange between Deacon and the fondler, Deacon said that the next song would be his last, immediately launching into his twelve-minute opus Wham City. While Wham City is a rad song by its own right, Deacon was in the middle of queuing up his live-only audience singalong (and my favorite track of his) Silence Like the Wind. This brings me back to the beginning of this article, and I get mad at Work/Sound and dickheaded concert-fondlers all over again. Grr.

Despite the fracas that ensued outside, the show was really pretty remarkable in that every band was good. That is indeed a rarity for me these days; I usually have bad things to say about at least one of the bands. My disdain for women-grabbers is so deeply entrenched, though, that it almost ruined a flawless show. Readers, don't do that. Don't be assholes. Also, don't crowdsurf or your shoes will be absconded with by myself. Be cool.