Three Bands Keep The Fun In The Weird

Sounds like nature. Sounds like video games. Choirs of unearthly voices and raspy tones from a saxophone. And people listening hard to build sounds together. All of this awaited the healthy crowd that showed up at Never Ending Books on Friday evening for a triple bill of The Sawtelles, Human Flourishing, and Angel Piss.

“Mister Conor, would you take the needle off the record, please?” Julie Riccio of the Sawtelles called from behind her drum kit to start the first set of music for the evening. She was referring to Conor Perreault, board member at Volume Two and one half of the act slated to follow the Sawtelles. From the adjacent room, the background music stopped. Then Riccio addressed the crowd. ​“We’re going to play stuff we have barely ever played once, so it’s going to make everyone else feel good about their sets,” she said. The audience laughed.

Julie and husband Peter Riccio then launched into a set of songs that plunged right back into the musical territory the duo has been mining for years, a little punk, a little Old Weird America, and a lot of grit and vibe. If they flagged that they were unfamiliar with their material, it didn’t sound that way; the Riccios played together with ease, their voices and instruments blending and supporting each other, creating propulsion through collaboration.

As the set progressed, the Sawtelles got looser and looser. ​“This is like a rewrite of an old song,” Julie said of the number they were about to perform.

“This is two songs,” Peter agreed.

“This is why you save your paper and fabric and supplies, because you never know — you might need them for something else,” she said. The audience laughed. Of the next song, Julie then said ​“this is a rewrite of a rewrite.” 

As they neared the end of their set, they revealed that they were about to play songs that they’d never really played together at all.

“It’s not going to stop me, and it shouldn’t stop you,” Julie said. ​“Just because you don’t know what you’re doing — who cares?” The proof of her statement was the music itself.

Human Flourishing — Conor Perreault and Greg Paul — set up wordlessly, assembling a rig that included a mass of wires and pedals, microphones, a suitcase, and a harmonica. Paul then began by inhaling and exhaling out of the haromica. Together the two created long drones that shifted in texture until they sounded like a chorus of alien children might. Pulsing minor chords rose from beneath them, anchoring them with tonality, making them sound mournful. Electronic chirps punctuated the proceedings. This gave way to an 8‑bit sound, as from an old video game, that became more frantic until it dissolved into clicks, as if from an electronic frying pan.

The voices then returned in a rush; the harmonica too. For a brief time the harmonica was all alone, in a sparse context of bubbles and pops. Perreault improvised a melody while Paul added chuckling asides. As they built the music again, they passed through electronic screeches and a bank of synthesized sounds to arrive at a surging wall of noise like a big wave heading for shore. The cacophony faded and they were left with a hissing, quiet backdrop.

“Human,” one of them said into his microphone. ​“Human,” the other responded. They passed the word back and forth until people in the audience started laughing. Did Perreault add ​“cumin?” Misheard or not, Human Flourishing’s set was a healthy reminder that improvised music doesn’t always have to be serious. Sometimes it’s people searching for something. Sometimes it’s just telling jokes. Sometimes it’s both.

Aly Maderson Quinlog took the stage in that spirit with their project Angel Piss, an experimental group featuring a rotating cast of characters that Friday included the New Haven music scene’s own Lys Guillorn. ​“We’re mostly improv,” Quinlog explained after the ensemble’s first number, ​“and I just made these loops a couple weeks ago, so here goes nothing!”

Quinlog’s loops began as long, fluctuating tones that made space. With flurries of notes from saxophone and searching phrases from lap steel, the vibe was set for sighs from the vocalists, then coyote-like yelps.

Quinlog then opened a small book and read from it, their voice drenched in delay. The poetry hung between vulnerable and wry, floating above the soundscape. ​“Too sad to dream, too tired to cry, hearing you humming in my third eye,” they read. ​“The forest grew inside of me and you, I eat you up, I love you so.”

Voices layered atop voices, intensifying the emotions at play, creating dislocation, but not without humor. Together the four musicians built up the sound with each pass through the long loops Quinlog had made. The effect was to create a sense of huge, slow things moving, like glaciers or tides, soothing, hypnotic, without forgetting to smile.