(Photo: (c) Pirlouiiiit – Concertandco.com)
The experimental post-rock group known today as Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra was first named, in an age now long past – that is, 1999 – simply A Silver Mt. Zion (or SMZ for short). Founded as a side project by members of instrumental Canadian outfit Godspeed You! Black Emperor, including GY!BE guitarist Efrim Menuck, bassist Thierry Amar and violinist Sophie Trudeau, SMZ has gone through almost as many iterations as their parent group, while at the same time both consistently pushing the same gritty, noisy envelope associated with either act and circumscribing a distinct sonic territory of its own. A decade of releases and a flurry of lineup changes later, SMZ has settled, at least for the time being, on its current five-piece configuration, with two violinists (Trudeau and Jessica Moss), accompanying Menuck, Amar and David Payant on drums, rounding out the quintet. Recently they brought their epically freewheeling, raw punk aesthetic to the equally freewheeling, punkishly raw Portland and a sold-out show at Mississippi Studios.
For a band billing itself as an orchestra, Mississippi’s cramped stage may have seemed a strange fit. Luckily, however, the group’s usually unwieldy roster whittled down to five, the effect generated was one of coziness and intimacy (and eardrums blasted to all hell by the group’s intensive, explosive and clanging dirges) rather than constriction. Or perhaps that was just the impression from the peanut gallery, in contrast with that of the black-clad mass of sweaty, beer-bearing, crowd-swimming humanity crushing one another on the floor directly facing the stage. For one thing, maintained access to one’s elbows is a prerequisite for taking notes, and so my company and I positioned ourselves toward the back where I could jot and she could see (kind of) without being knocked around. Onstage SMZ fell into a Flying V, with Amar and his upright bass and Menuck, the band’s de facto vocalist, dividing Payant’s kit (with an upside-down portrait of Prime Minister Stephen Harper hanging above him) from Trudeau and Moss in front on the wings.
Favoring long, unsettled, complicatedly arranged suites attached with deeply abstruse, half-overtly political lyrics, the experience of an SMZ show is one of arching, space-black infinitude and deconstructive, slow-burning irreverence; filled with straightforward pop songs and cheery, short-lived bursts of activity SMZ’s discography – and performances – aren’t. Borrowing primarily from the last half-decade’s output, the band touched on newer material first, exhuming “There Is a Light,” from 2010’s Kollaps Tradixionales and the title track off 2008’s 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, unexpected key and rhythmic shifts lending a chameleonic, fluid feel to both that pre-empted much applause upon their conclusion. The soft back-and-forth of violins, guitar and percussion counterposed against rising strings (broken by sorrowful plucking in the minor key) and disassembled bridges of discordant noise were nearly enough to paint bleak scenes of rambling urban dystopia, of a “blackout at the terror trials,” “electrical fits/ tantrums and prayers” and how “The hangman’s got a hard-on/ The pretty minstrels sway/ The pundit reeks of coffin/ The banker rapes a maid,” even without Menuck’s yowls, the surprise protrusions of his tongue while he sings and his mumbled punk syllables. Afterward, runs on bass and percussion, an expansive rhythm and some doo-wop backing vocals helped push through the barely months-old tune “What We Loved Was Not Enough,” and a slow build, incessant cymbal splashes and contrary strings effected the same for “Black Waters Blowed/Engine Broke Blues.”
SMZ wrapped up their set – only a handful of songs long, but already approaching an hour in length – with the steadily ticking-up “BlindBlindBlind” and its stuttering ambience as well as the exceptional title track off 2005’s Horses in the Sky (“And our schools look like prisons/ And our prisons look like malls/ And downtown’s just a sick parade/ Where no one cares at all“). The band even took the time during the show to include a few breaks for fielding questions from the crowd (two concergoers asked of whom the upside-down portrait was, at least one concertgoer admitted he’d thought it was Stephen Colbert, while a fourth, tongue-in-check, asked SMZ – particularly Menuck – to stop answering questions and play). Going so far as to turn the forum around on the crowd, Menuck, affably talkative between songs and not one to forgo wearing his politics on his sleeve, wondered aloud, “Does the friendly policeman (you see on TV) exist in real life?” It’s a valid question, although whether or not it fit the milieu is unimportant – packed shoulder to shoulder and grin to grin, Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra, whatever its agreed-upon name, seemed more than at home on the Mississippi Studios stage.
