Within the spheres which we drift the likes of Sleater-Kinney, Helium, Quasi (the list could and possibly should go on) are exceptionally relevant, significant bands to have wedged somewhere in the old record collection. Yet tonight their lack of any form of pretence when it could be in their every swagger and swan is adorable: they compile their own equipment; they let the music do the talking and the shouting and the screaming and the seducing; they understatedly enthral with the primal simplicity of a torso reddened and rendered raw by much chest thumping. In this intimate setting, with no cloak of reverb nor pristine mixing to cower behind, the chemistry that bristles and sparks between the troupe like exposed cabling crackles to the fore, Brownstein thrashing her SG replica in windmill-like motion during a rollocking Romance and a cataclysmic new one as curled fringes are swished and flicked. Racehorse, their most expansive effort on record, is afforded further spatial fields into which it may gallop, the Portlandians (and sole Washingtonian) opening up forever more room for manoeuvre while its smooched vox sound as if caught in, and then thrown up from, the throat of The Lexington's primary speaker stack. Parlous, yet oft cogent moments of wily improvisation ensue, before being tied back by Timony's girl-in-the-corner coo which subtly yet forcefully offsets Brownstein's ferocious roars and lip-snarled, toe-curling shrieking. When the pair occasionally duet, it's left to the latter to thunder the thing along vocally, the former looking all the more shy, retiring, and ultimately uncomfortable.
Consequently, they're at their most effective when Brownstein takes the reins, perverting every observance and allowing Timony to concentratedly tap away to Short Version or noodle off irresistibly on the night's highlight, Black Tiles. However it's a late one elevated by as many pinnacles as a minor mountain range, the stuff of the self-titled delivered like a bucketed wash of watercolour acerbic enough to burn through canvas on contact, draining away most excess preconceptions devised according to antecedence as it smoulders. It's Weiss' nigh on melodic rhythms that unapologetically power it, her rapport with Brownstein reignited and duly torched most noteworthily during the cosmically groovy denouement to Glass Tambourine that's then greeted with the condensed whoop of a particularly sensational Abbey Road session.
Throwing throwback, riotious post-punk pandemonium (that's dispiritingly all too restrainedly appreciated by the quietly overawed-slash-overwhelmed congregation) to the gelid December winds of Pentonville Road, during a double encore every hair is let down and all shook up as they become the best covers band never to have gently quaked Caesars Palace, the Carlsberg of covers bands if you will, as the Rolling Stones' Beast Of Burden and Judy Is A Punk are given frisky, distortion-charged reconsiderations.
While Wild Flag may manically fly the vaunt of a new band, it remains problematic to mentally detract from the individual pasts of its components to scrabble pinnacle-wards to a collective present, and this detraction is periodically distracting. Yet with experience comes excellence, and the first show on these fertile soils is delivered like their umpteenth, a quietly strident punk show to live longer in the memory than this hour and the running time of The Ramones' back catalogue in its entirety combined.
