I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: September 12, 2019] And And And

When I saw the band that was opening for Built to Spill was called And And And, I knew it sounded familiar.  I knew it was from some work of fiction.  And then it finally came to me that it was from The Commitments. Roddy Doyle’s hilarious book that inspired the movie.

The band is mentioned here:

Jimmy Rabbitte: What do you call yourselves?
Derek: “And And And.”
Jimmy Rabbitte: “And And fuckin’ And?”
Derek: Well, Ray’s thinking of putting an exclamation mark after the second “and.” Says it’d look deadly on the posters.
Jimmy Rabbitte: Psshh…
Outspan Foster: You don’t like it? You think it should go at the end?
Jimmy Rabbitte: I think it should go up his arse.

Excellent.

I instantly loved this band from Portland who were so bold as to take this name (no exclamation points).

And And And have been around for nearly ten years and they have quite a few recordings out.  It’s hard to find much about them online, mostly because their name messes with search engines, but their bandcamp site has their music and info about them.

The band consists of four members.  When they started the show, it was acoustic guitar, bass, keyboards and drums.  The first couple of songs were more mellow and acoustic.  I really gravitated to the basslines, perhaps because they were so prominent but also because the other instruments were a bit quieter.  Jonathan Sallas is on bass and I really liked how all of these songs seemed to have some aspect of interesting bass work thrown in.

After a song or two.  Berg Gradin switched from keyboards to electric guitar adding a whole new sonic texture to the songs.  Soon enough vocalist Nathan Baumgartner switched from acoustic to electric guitar and their songs started rocking harder like “One More Trip to Babylon“.

Perhaps my favorite person to watch during the whole set was Bim Ditson on drums.  He was so animated and played some really fast fills on the snare.  By the end of the set he was really crushing the kit.

I’m bummed I didn’t learn the names of too many of the songs (and And And And is virtually impossible to find on Setlist.fm!).  So I’m stuck saying that I really liked this song that transitioned from slow chords into a very cool riff.

But what really impressed me most about the band was that by the end of their set they had transformed from a folky/thought-provoking lyrics band into an all out rocking/still thought-provoking lyrics band.  The last song was so heavy and almost discordant that it was hard to believe it was the same guys.

I preferred their latter songs but the whole set was very cool and I liked the journey they took us on.

SETLIST OF Song titles and lyrics (in lowercase) I think I heard heard:

1. banging on my door
2. waking up from the dream
3. I Can See Your Face
4. trying not to kill the things I love
5. The Middle
6. all in my mind
7. Windows for the Blind Î
8. Too Soon of Love
9. One More Trip to Babylon ¥
10. i wished my whole life away
11. A Real Case of the Blues ¥
12. Alive or Dreaming Î
13. Hate The World [“but it’s a happy song”]

¥ The Failure (2015)
Î The Idiot (2019)