First Communion Afterparty at the Nomad

Right now, I'm watching First Communion Afterparty at the Nomad. They're going to be taking over from Ice Palace as the resident band for the Minneseries in April. Frankly, I didn't like them the first time I saw them back at the Kitty Cat Klub last summer. They're derivative, barely in tune, and a little ridiculous with their overtly '60s stage presence, but dammit: they're winning me over. There's a woman at the front of the stage with voluminous blonde hair and a mega-mod orange dress that could have come straight out of the movie "Blow Up," and her only job, apparently is to play the tamborine, and she's taking it very seriously. She has an odd, unaffected look on her face, kind of like she's above it all. Even when the band (all seven of them) churn the music into a maelstrom, she betrays no emotional involvement at all.

More than any one band from the '60s (although the Jefferson Airplane and the Mamas and the Papas spring immediately to mind), they remind me of Spiritualized, which ain't a bad thing, let me tell you.

They always seem a little out of tune, and I couldn't really tell you if I like it or not. I know, based on the article that Charlie Vaughan turned in on them, that they have a kind of utopian dram of starting a commune somewhere on the west coast. And you know what? I can see it, because their music has a certain audienceless aspect. Follow me here.

Once upon a time, there weren't recordings that would allow you to play back whatever you wanted to hear at the touch of a button and, even further back, there weren't public performances of music with an audience seated in their chairs listening. Back in the days of Guillaume de Machaut and Perotin, who wrote sacred music in the 12th and 13th centuries, you either participated in the music, or you didn't hear it. The idea of a final musical "product" didn't exist. Take a moment and really try to imagine a world in which the only music you hear is music made by you and your friends. A world in which there's not even an option to do it another way. First Communion Party have just a touch of that feel to them.

You could construe their stage act as an affectation, and maybe you wouldn't be wrong about that. But if you can suspend your disbelief in their earnestness for a moment, I think you'll find a ragged, participatory beauty underneath.