Live review: Tauntaun, Alan Alda @ the Bluebird Theater

By Cassandra Schoon | September 1st, 2009 | No Comments »

Tauntaun pummeled the crowd at the Bluebird on Friday with its vintage-flavored metal. Photos by Brian Carney.

With many of my favorite Denver-area bands breaking up and moving on this year, I’m on the musical rebound right now. And after seeing Alan Alda and Tauntaun at the Bluebird Friday night, I have to say that the top couple of slots on my newly-revised top-10 list may be taken.

Due to a communication snafu at the box office, I missed Ian Cooke’s set for this show. So my night started with Alan Alda, a band I’d never seen before. This three-piece band has a weight and dimension of sound that all three-piece bands should aspire to. Hearkening back to the mix tapes of my high school years (June of 44, Fugazi, Rodan), Alan Alda has that crucial combination: a healthy, well-chosen pedigree behind each riff, and the musical talent to do it justice.

Alan Alda played in front of a homemade, Christmas-light placard proclaiming both their band name and their quirky sense of humor. Their nerdy appearance and clipped, witty onstage banter notwithstanding (which I’ve come to expect from smartypants indie-rock types, not a riff-loving post-hardcore band) Alan Alda is doing music for all the right reasons: to get better at it and to show Denver a good time. And although the 21-and-under contingent at this all-ages show probably have no clue where the band got their name, they did, in fact, seem to be having an awesome night.

Tauntaun took the stage next, steering the night sharply into much darker territory. Tauntaun’s brand of metal is my favorite — all the baroque filligrees of a Vivaldi concerto played on searing electric guitar to vocals that seem to emanate from at least the sixth (preferably the eighth) circle of Dante’s inferno. Even better is when a metal band has these kinds of insane chops, the kind that make you want to go home and practice guitar till you bleed from the fingers, but with a tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of how silly and pompous heavy metal can be.

Tauntaun has made much of the fact that their latest release would be influenced solely by pre-1986 metal, shying away from the late-’80s era when metal had, arguably, turned its silliest and most pompous. They bring their own edge of modernity and freshness to pre-Poison, pre-James Hetfield’s-bald-spot metal… like what Slayer and Metallica might have sounded like if the maddening historical events of hair metal and Napster had never occurred.

For their last song, “Air Sea Battle,” Ian Cooke reappeared onstage to contribute his trademark cello to the sweeping, soaring instrumental. By this point, we were so close to the stage that my fiance was trying to retie bassist Matty Clark’s Chuck Taylors. And as the song ended after its ninth or tenth crescendo (lost count there for a bit), the ringing deafness in my ear and the aching in my face (from my perpetual awestruck grin) had made one thing clear. I have a two new favorite bands.

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Cassandra Schoon is an assistant manager at Sportique Scooters and a regular Reverb contributor.

Brian Carney is a Denver photographer and a regular contributor to Reverb.

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