Brian Slattery Photo
It was near the end of the set for If Jesus Had Machine Guns, and vocalist Jimi Patterson began by brooding at one of the tables at Three Sheets, off stage. The band, mostly on stage, ramped up.
Suddenly Patterson was on his feet and prowling. He sprang from foot to foot, then jumped off the stage into the eager crowd. At a climactic moment, he fall backward and hit the floor. He sang the whole time. Everyone loved it.
It was the pinnacle of a four-band night at Three Sheets that began with Brooklyn duo Slim Wray. Armed with a hollow-body guitar, a rack of pedals, a drum kit, and two microphones, Ryan Houser and Chris Moran worked their way through a set of energetic, blues-inflected numbers akin to those of other semi-recent rock duos. They also revealed themselves to be great at stage banter, particularly regarding Three Sheets’s food.
“You don’t want to get between a drummer and his mac and cheese,” Houser said.
“Yeah,” said Moran. “I’ll sleep on your couch.”
In the set’s standout number, “Cut Out,” Slim Wray blazed their own musical trail, adding spacier guitar sounds and surprising rhythms to the mix and suggesting that the band is about to enter a new phase. “We’re writing a couple more like it,” said Moran, “like if Jerry Garcia rode an ape-hanger motorcycle.”
The mood was thus already up when the next band took the stage.
“We’re Straight to VHS, from New London, Connecticut,” said Jon Young, the band’s lead singer and guitarist.
“Prove it!” said someone from the crowd.
They did. The trio — Young, Tim Donnel on bass, and Jay Silva on drums — has been gigging a lot recently, with a few shows coming up all over the state, and they played with the tight intensity of a well-practiced band while staying true to the raucous garage-rock sound they love.
Houser and Moran (from the previous band) got several other people up on their feet for a good-natured mosh pit. Among them was videographer Travis Carbonella, who, in a moment of beauty, ended up in a couples dance with Moran that led to a dip right at the end of one of the band’s quieter numbers.
Next up was the brainily aggressive Shelter Dogs, the members of which hail from New Haven and Brooklyn. Brian LaRue (vocals and guitars), John Mordecai (keyboards and vocals), Daniel Kasshu (bass), and Bob Breychak (drums) ripped through a set of songs that captured the kind of sound Elvis Costello used to like, but updated it, too, making it more directly emotional — more vulnerable, even — without losing the edge that made the sound great in the first place.
It was perhaps the perfect setup for If Jesus Had Machine Guns. In its recordings so far, the band does for the sound of ‘80s dream pop what Shelter Dogs does to its inspirations; it would be at home with the darker side of Depeche Mode or Cocteau Twins. The general dreaminess of the sound doesn’t prepare you for the band’s live show, which kicks the energy up about 500 notches. The six-piece plays really well together, blending electronic tones from keyboards and drum machines with the live sounds of electric guitars, bass, and drums in a thoughtful, compelling way, and the band loses itself in the music when it plays. But the band’s unmistakable focus is Jimi Patterson, its lead vocalist. The press release for this show describes him as an “in-earnest maniac,” and for once it’s not exaggerating.
Before the show, Patterson stretched on stage, and did poses, some yogic, some balletic, some like a bodybuilder. It was only a taste of what was coming. In song after song, Patterson was transformed, leaping into the crowd and up on tables, doing a lap around the bar, lunging across the stage, throwing his hands to the sky, getting down on his knees. All of this was performed with a raw intensity that made it much more than a routine; it was the physical expression of what he was feeling and wanted us to feel. In a night of great music, the look in Patterson’s eyes was the most electrifying thing.
