Photo credit: Benjamin Wick
Maritime
The participating bands at Milwaukee Record’s second annual Local Coverage concert probably didn’t need to take the challenge as seriously as they did. The benefit tasked 10 Milwaukee acts with creating brief tribute sets to each other, an inherently fun premise for a show that doesn’t put a whole lot of pressure on any given act. The bands could have tossed off good-natured, 15-minute sets of half-rehearsed covers, and they still would have shown the crowd a great time while raising money for a pair of worthwhile causes (proceeds this year were split between Girls Rock Milwaukee and the Guest House of Milwaukee). It was kind of remarkable, though, just how much effort they all put in. All 10 went the extra mile to reinvent and deconstruct their assigned songbook, delivering sets that said as much about themselves as the bands they were paying homage to.
At times the show almost felt like a friendly competition to see which act could stretch themselves the most. If it was, Klassik took home that award. Klassik’s best thought of as a rapper, but his real gift is as an arranger, and he put it on full display Friday, recruiting a distinguished live ensemble to assist him in his elegant re-imaginings of three songs from indie-rockers Decibully, including drummer Airo Kwil, upright bassist Johanna Rosa and the string duo SistaStrings. Rather than relying on the built-in thrill of Decibully’s loud/soft swells, the quintet often worked around it, instead playing up the tenderness coloring the margins of the band’s songs.
Rock ’n’ roll true believers Tigernite, meanwhile, took a more direct approach to their amped-up set of GGOOLLDD covers. Tigernite’s Molly Roberts and GGOOLLDD’s Margaret Butler are two of the city’s most captivating frontwoman, but they’re temperamental opposites; where Butler’s voice is coquettish and vulnerable, Roberts’ is all flexed muscle, more Joan Jett than Stevie Nicks. Donned in GGOOLLDD’s signature gold spandex, her and her band ripped through their Guitar Hero-ified versions of the group’s purring electro-pop, absolutely bowling over the crowd in the process. Has a Milwaukee band ever made this many new fans in such a short set? Earlier this month GGOOLLDD became the first Milwaukee headliner to sell out the Turner Hall Ballroom; this felt like Tigernite making a bid for that same throne.
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For their own set, GGOOLLDD dressed down as average, everyday Milwaukee dudes to pay homage to Maritime. Even in Packers T-shirts and baseball caps, however, the band exuded their usual glamour, bringing a dramatic, electronic radiance to Maritime’s sweet guitar-pop tune. And even when she’s channeling Davey von Bohlen, Butler performs like she’s posing for an imaginary camera.
The MVPs at last year’s inaugural Local Coverage show, where they slayed a series of Whips songs, Maritime channeled that same ferocity in their covers of Sat. Nite Duets’ askew indie-pop. This band has always rocked harder than their reputation suggests. And while there must have been a temptation for some of the lineup’s bands to play up the whimsy of being, say, a folk band covering a rapper (Twin Brother, who did Klassik), or an acoustic country ensemble covering a punk band (Whiskeybelles, who did Fox Face), none of them fell into that trap. All of them treated their source material with straight-faced respect.
For the night’s final set, a reunited Decibully took on Soul Low, and it was another pairing that dripped with significance: the best Milwaukee indie-rock band of their era, covering a younger band that’s making a decent case for being the best of their own. And like so many of the night’s best sets, it was a study in contrasts, given how Decibully bleeds sincerity, while Soul Low tends to guard theirs behind a squirrely façade that can strike some as aloof. Decibully cracked their songs wide open, with William Seidel’s pleading voice playing up the emotion in every lyric as the band patiently built each song to voluptuous, quadruple-guitar payoffs. It was an exhilarating finish to an entirely too generous night. Usually these kinds of unforgettable, one-off performances only come a few times a year. Local Coverage kept delivering them one after another.
