The Musical Box

kori gardner and jason hammel of mates of state. photo by crackerfarm.

“OK. This is gonna suck. Get ready.”

Such was the warning given by Mates of State keyboardist Kori Gardner last night at The Dame on a rainsoaked evening that coincided with a season opening University of Kentucky basketball loss. Spirits, on anyone’s part, weren’t terribly high.

Specifically, the response was to an audience request that the husband-and-wife indie pop duo take a unrehearsed stab at An Experiment. The tune was built not all that long ago (2003 to be exact) around Mates of State’s organ/drums matrix, a sound that took a back seat for much of last night’s 75 minute set in favor of the more modified Roland piano and Korg synthesizer colors that bleebed, gurgled and punctuated through the pop fare from the new Re-Arrange Us album.

Admittedly, the tune was a little rough around the rhythmic edges, but An Experiment proved to be anything but. For much of the performance, regardless of whether it operated with a modified version of the familiar Mates of Stare organ charge (on the elemental Proofs from 2000’s My Solo Project album) or a more pasteurized piano cool (during Get Better, a bittersweet take on Re-Arrange Us‘ sunny pop stride), the formula seldom shifted.

Drummer Jason Hammel designed steady, even static drum grooves that became percussive mantras for Gardner’s primitive keyboard colors. There were a few variances, like a cameo by the show-opening Brother Reade, which injected Goods (All in Your Head) with hearty hip-hop that bordered on beat poetry. A double dose of alternating pop hooks also cleverly collided during Fluke. Hammel even got a centerstage break from the drums to sing lead on a fairly lumbering cover of Jackson Browne’s These Days.

Mostly though, the duos’s rough but hearty harmonies and elemental melodies ran on with unwavering, almost mechanical exactness.