Elvis Depressedly and Mitski turned it up at PhilaMOCA. Way up.

Elvis Depressedly | Photo by Rachel Del Sordo | racheldelsordophotography.com

I’m not saying they’re easygoing on record or anything. Even when an artist’s studio work skews quieter and contemplative, it can have nuance and depth. Sure, their Bandcamp discography is filled with chilled-out and downtempo moments, but Asheville’s Elvis Depressedly is the antithesis of a beachy bro-band; Brooklyn’s Mitski is a singer-guitarist who writes songs, but she’s hardly a naval-gazing singer-songwriter. Both acts boast a reserved intensity, and when you put them in front of a crowd, it turns up and explodes. Which is what made them great tour partners, and made their sold-out show at PhilaMOCA last Wednesday so captivating.

After an all-too-brief set by Eskimeaux – a melancholic pop outfit fronted by New York’s Gabrielle Smith – the five-piece live configuration of Elvis Depressedly took the stage. Mat Cothran is the guy at the center of the project; on album, he’s the maestro playing numerous instruments. Onstage, though, he’s a vocalist and just a vocalist, a dude with an exhausted swagger, shaggy hair, a cutoff t-shirt and a natural sign tattooed on his left shoulder. Which, yeah, sounds low-key, but give him a minute to ease into the set. By the time “N.M.S.S. (No More Sad Songs)” from the band’s current offering New Alhmabra hit, the group was in motion and had us hooked.

Their set was by no means an amps-cranked-to-11 affair, and was perhaps all the more gripping for it – Elvis Depressedly the live band rescues Cothran’s songs from the tape hiss, static and fuzz on their albums and EP (which, to be fair, do sound pretty sweet in that context) and reveal emotive arrangements that cut to the core. Layers of keyboards mesh with chiming guitars; drumbeats swell from soft patters to pounding crescendos. It was dynamic and expressive, and a little bit cinematic. Maybe it was Cothran’s gentle singing juxtaposed with his explosive scream (which reared its head a few times; I believe it was “Teeth” where it jumped out most prominently); maybe it was his beard. But I kept thinking that the easy comparison for the unfamiliar would be Toronto’s Fucked Up, had they listened to more Joy Division than Black Flag.

Highlights were “Mickey Yr a Fuck Up” – which breathed new and vaguely Britpoppy life into the distant version from the band’s 2011 record Goner – and a new song called “Angel Come Clean,” which is rumored to be a bonus track on a forthcoming reissue of 2013’s Halo Pleasures (here they are playing it in LA). When a rumbling take Alhambra’s “Wastes of Time” cut to a close, immediately bringing in the fuzz-tones of “Weird Honey” from Halo, the conclusion was fierce, and Cothran got to his knees as the band played out, drained or dejected or both, and in a memorable stance to end the set either case.

That Mitski was loud and engaging from the get-go is a little bit less of a surprise – last year’s sleeper hit Bury Me at Makeout Creek had big and badass moments like “Townie,” which opened the PhilaMOCA show with a wallop of amplifiers and beats, electrifying the devoted fans packing the room. While the album has quiet-quiets mixed with its loud-louds, her band is currently configured as a power trio, giving the “Townie” treatment to pretty much all the songs they play on.

“First Love / Late Spring” hit with more immediacy than the swaying distortion pedal slow dance heard on the record. The longing “Francis Forever” had a lot of crunch and punch to it, while taking “I Don’t Smoke” down to voals-guitar-bass-drums made its powerful lyrics like “if you need to be mean, be mean to me / I can take it and put it inside of me” all the more pronounced.

Then there was a new-ish song that appeared to be called “Jerusalem” – it freaking absolutely rips. With driving punk riffs and an unbridled delivery, Mitski pitted hopes and ambition against an unforgiving reality: “I wanna see the whole world / I don’t know how I’m gonna pay for it.” (Here she is playing it at Johnny Brenda’s in April.)

Possibly the most intense moments of the set, though, were the ones where the band was not even present. After eight songs, Mitski was left onstage for solo a solo performance of “Class of 2013,” found on Retired from Sad, New Career in Business – she punctuating it by howling into her guitar pickups, and followed it with the aching “Last Words of a Shooting Star” which was both the quietest and yet most haunting moment of her set and the entire night.

Check photos from the show in the gallery below.

Elvis Depressedly setlist
Inside You
NMSS
U Angel U
New Heaven, New Earth
Ease
Teeth
Mickey Yr a Fuck Up
Bodil
Angel Come Clean
Bruises (Amethyst)
Wastes of Time
Weird Honey

Mitski setlist
Townie
First Love / Late Spring
I Want You
Jerusalem
Francis Forever
I Don’t Smoke
I Will
Drunk Walk Home
Class of 2013
Last Words of a Shooting Star