When I think of Tyrannosaurus Rock shows, often held in Maury Hall, two things come to mind. The first is sweat, which is to be expected when a bunch of energized college kids get together to dance. The second is community. Last Friday's benefit concert, part of Take Back the Night week, featured Cataract Camp, Mass Movement of the Moth and Travis Morrison, as well as sweat and community.
The show benefited the Shelter for Help in Emergency, an organization which houses and aids victims of domestic abuse and their families in the Charlottesville area. Excited to support SHE, the crowd danced the night away to noise, metal and post-rock music. Crowd members wore Take Back the Night shirts and spoke about support groups for women in between sets. It was a wonderful experience to see so many concerned kids getting together to support a worthy cause and U.Va.'s burgeoning underground scene.
The show kicked off with local heartthrobs Cataract Camp ripping through a fuzzed-out set. The group's brand of dissonant noise rock electrified the crowd squeezed into a classroom. An amazing high-speed segue from "Bring Us Rain" to "Family Secret" thrilled the crowd, and distorted, synthed and screamed vocals gave the set a frenzied feel. Keeping with the show-in-a-classroom aesthetic of Tyrannosaurus Rock events, synth player/vocalist Zach Carter kept the atmosphere fun, speaking throughout the set as if he were a fascist German schoolteacher.
Arriving about three hours late from somewhere in Northern Virginia, Mass Movement of the Moth took the stage next. Its DC-metro area metal ultimately came across as a Majority Rule mixed with Primus' noisy breakdowns but with the skill of neither. Thankfully, the group managed to keep the crowd dancing, and though the band wasn't totally awful, I wasn't disappointed when Mass Movement left the stage.
Last up was Travis Morrison, formerly of seminal D.C. post-rock act Dismemberment Plan. Dismemberment Plan was one of the greatest bands D.C. has ever had, but Morrison's debut solo album, Travistan, was the worst record I heard last year. To my relief, Morrison now has a band backing him, and most of the songs they played were written well after the atrocious Travistan.
Despite my preconceived notions of the guy, Morrison's set was surprisingly fun. The glitchy Dismemberment Plan sound had crept back with the addition of synths and two percussionists, and the vocals weren't nearly as annoying in person. Morrison, who seemed to think the event was a pro-choice rally, still came off as arrogant and tasteless in his ad-libbing between songs, a character flaw that goes back to his Dismemberment Plan days.
In the end, though, Morrison and Co. were more fun than I had anticipated -- both crowd and band closed the show with dancing, DC-style handclaps, sweat and community.
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