Lightning Bolt, Kilby Court, April 7th, 2011

First Start: Not planned, but convenient I’m posting this right after one with Scott Teplin’s hyper-detailed drawings of mangled vehicle viscera. Not that Brian Chippendale’s own drawings don’t represent the band well, but Teplin’s drawings, featured below, are very nearly the carnage, in visual form, that Lightning Bolt produces.

Start Over: People watching is best at Lightning Bolt concerts. First, it’s action–because you’re also watching out for yourself, in a sea of arms and sweat, not to be pushed into Chippendale’s blur-flail drumming and be jarred to bits. Second–and perhaps this is why I think this–the first time Erin and I saw Lightning Bolt, there was this girl across the way, right behind Brian Gibson, who we later dubbed “orgasm girl,” because of her clenched-eyed facial expressions in reaction to the noise.

New Start; Start 3: The quintessential live band. It’s no grand statement to say so. Everyone knows it’s truth. I remember reading about their live setup in CMJ magazine as a teenager, ordering their records because of it, waiting for the day that I would actually be a witness to it…

Doing a New Start, Again: Title: Lightning Bolt; a second date. First date was a few years ago with Erin. Me + Lightning Bolt was the reason Erin married me. So a second date, despite my wedded status, was always in the cards. What I’ve learned on date number 2: Lightning Bolt…

15.

Lightning Bolt
Wonderful Rainbow
(Load, 2003)

Wonderful Rainbow holds an unexpected romantic sentimentality for me. When Sassigrass and I first started dating we shared a bunch of music with each other and of the truckload of CDs I flung at her, Wonderful Rainbow was the first to stick. Later while playing the album in her room, I jumped atop her bed and proceeded to play a ridiculously technical air-bass line (I believe it was during “Crown Of Storms”) with all the proper punk swagger that is understandably missing from Brian Gibson’s statuesque live performances to the laughter of Sassigrass and, unexpectedly, the slightly embarrassing laughter of my future mother-in-law as she entered the room unannounced. Cute huh? Perhaps the cutest story ever to accompany this deathly pummeling monument of noise and rock that is Lightning Bolt’s Wonderful Rainbow.

-Thistle

Lightning Bolt - Earthly Delights

Lightning Bolt
Earthly Delights
(2009, Load)
RIYL = Mindflayer, Hella, HEALTH

When I was a freshman at Salt Lake Community College (that’s right!) I wrote a rhetorical analysis of articles and reviews written about Lightning Bolt. As you might imagine, the paper highlighted the inevitably violent imagery used when describing Lightning Bolt’s sound. It seemed (and still seems) almost impossible to describe what Lightning Bolt does with just a bass guitar and drums without invoking the frantic, jagged, propulsive, brutally aggressive nature of their music. However, despite the obligatory mentions of ear pummeling, brain collapsing rock n’ roll, there has also always been an ever present innocence to Lightning Bolt. A kind of wry smile and mischievous turn that made Lightning Bolt fun rather than malicious. That, I think, is the genius of the group. And make no mistake, this stuff is bloody genius! Now, it has been sometime since Lightning Bolt last released an album and I have developed some fear that the freshness and vitality of the Lightning Bolt sound was losing its luster. After all, Hypermagic Mountain, for all its glorious goodness, was definitely no Wonderful Rainbow. And the unfortunate trend seems to be that most bands taper off in musical genius, rarely morphing or improving on their breakthrough classics. Lightning Bolt was still the funnest live show I’ve ever been too, but I just wasn’t sure if I could take the slow descent from another one of my all time favourite bands. I was genuinely nervous, but after my first run through Earthly Delights, all that nervousness just evaporated. Back again was that simultaneous strain of lips and neck, the proper result banging my head, eyes closed all while smiling from ear to ear. Earthly Delights is a beautiful, gratuitously nutso aggressive return to form for a band that really only made a minor dip before waiting five(!) years to return with this. On the side of innovation, there really isn’t a whole lot to say. Lightning Bolt is still blasting riffs and bass pedals a mile a minute, yet somehow Earthly Delights feels as refreshing and relevant as anything the band has produced. And it makes me happy for it to be so. BOOM SMSHy Clap BANGBANG chugga chugga chugga SMASH BLAMMMMM! Oh Lightning Bolt, We’ve missed you. Thank you for coming back. Thank you for Earthly Delights! I love love love Lightning Bolt and Earthly Delights is a healthy example of why.

-Thistle