Last Saturday, at a creepy loft in Greenpoint, Pitchfork and the Brooklyn record label Sacred Bones presented an experiment in buzzband chemistry. The new-wave Iceage offshoot Vår performed alongside noise artist Pharmakon, with a varied degree of success.
It made sense for the artists to perform together. Both revel in near-Satanic darkness and are clearly friends — Margaret Chardiet, who is Pharmakon, has a spoken-word piece on one track of the Vår record. Vår trade in Joy Division-esque dark pop music, which today, when you can literally buy an upside-down cross shirt for $10 at Forever21, is hard to imagine offending or disturbing anyone. Pharmakon, on the other hand, has stated her mission to make her audience uncomfortable, and watching her live, the strength of this desire is such that it leaves the crowd reeling from the pure, bubbling rage.
The artists had requested to perform without a stage, which I’m sure was great for the 15 people standing in front, but it kind of sucked for everyone else. I spend the majority of the show trying to find an angle from which I could see anything. The performance happened round robin-style, with Vår opening with a quiet and somewhat weak song (the sound made it difficult to hear any vocals that weren’t screamed). Then Chardiet began to build up to her terrifying single “Ache,” and the feeling in the room changed from hip hangout to horror movie — her performance felt like a sign from God (or whoever) that this fifth-floor loft was about to open up and swallow Brooklyn’s elite goths into hell. One of the most successful moments of the show was at the end of another Pharmakon track when Vår’s drums came in — I would totally go see an orchestral Pharmakon show. Her contributions to their songs, however, felt less useful.
Vår’s performance, which included their lead singer repeatedly submerging his head into a bucket of muddy water, felt mostly like I was watching the most metal cologne ad of all time. While Chardiet is so possessed by her darkness, it seems as if it were a demon that’s lived inside her all her life, Vår’s show was… a show. They screamed very convincingly, but the whole thing reminded me a lot of wandering around the popular immersive theater experience Sleep No More — a supposed 1920s noir hotel filled with beautiful actors enacting deranged Macbeth-inspired scenes, but which in fact is a former club in Chelsea that big-deal corporations now use to take out their clients. And there’s nothing wrong with that; I love Sleep No More, and I understand why people enjoy Vår. But when juxtaposed with an artist who has committed her life to expressing her serious, gaping angst, it’s hard for a band like Vår’s brand of darkness to seem like anything more than a passing ghost.
