Hella's Spencer Selm Janet 'n' Sam (doesn't Sam look scruffy?) Red-hot Roxichord action.

The evening starts with Hella -- skeletally intense Spencer Selm on electric guitar, shaggy California guy Zach Hill on drums. Even as they are setting up, you can tell that the drumming will be intense. One of Hill's cymbals looks like someone took a bite out of it, and then, perhaps disliking the taste, turned it inside out in rage.

Then the music starts, and you realize that, with all the abuse that cymbal takes, it's a miracle that it's there at all. The duo crashes through rapid fire staccato riffs, churning out not just 16th notes but 24ths and 32nds, lurching through odd, undanceable time signatures, utterly precise and united. By mid-set, Hill is performing what looks like a high-speed game of Twister™, crossing arm over arm, pounding one bare and one shoed foot with unbelievable rapidity, visually blurring but aurally distinct and right on the complicated rhythm. Every phrase is a fill. There's no simple time-keeping, yet he and Selm remain lock-stepped together across increasingly difficult terrain, Selm grimacing and bobbing and using both hands to pluck near the neck of his flowered electric guitar. They work in a symmetry that feels almost improvised, yet the tracks that I found later sounded just like the live show.

It's time for humility. I knew nothing about Hella before the show -- and it's really hard to recognize songs after the fact -- but the set seemed to lean heavily on Hold Your Horse Is. By the last two songs, "Biblical Violence" and "Been a Long Time Coming", Hella had broken through, winning over the crowd with a sound that was as shatteringly loud as it was complexly beautiful. They did it all tonight with guitar and drums, and none of the electronic manipulations of the recent EPs. It's a guy thing, no question, valuing speed and aggression over all else, but it's a smart, difficult guy thing, unbearably intense yet rooted in logic. It's cooler and drier somehow than The Lightening Bolt's metal-toned explosions, a thing that feels like free jazz crossed with hardcore.

Hella finish, exhausted, dripping with sweat. After a long pause, Quasi's Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss take the stage. They spend a long time setting up, checking the mic levels at length, before launching into a very rough and sloppy set. It is the first night of the tour, and the pair seem not to have spent much time together -- or done much work on the songs they will play.

Early on, Quasi hits some of the highlights of their new album, Hot Shit!, including the crazy barroom piano-driven "Drunken Tears" and the title track, supported by a tinnily taped intro that doesn't have the Brian Wilson echo it does on the disc. The very political, very Creedence referencing "White Devil's Dream" is another highlight, Coomes taunting Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld and Blair with rootsy twang and a shit-eating grin. And when Weiss moves onto keys and Coomes to guitar, the porch-thumping "Master and Dog" becomes a highlight, moving gradually from Americana to sitar-tinged psychedelia over its sprawling run. There are also some very good renditions of older songs -- "Birds" from Field Recordings, "It's Raining" from Sword of God and finally, after a bit of struggle, "You Fucked Yourself" from Featuring 'Birds'.

Yet despite some enjoyable moments, Quasi never really hit a consistent stride. Coomes is sitting blankly at the keyboard before "Hot Shit", when Weiss gently reminds him, "You'll need your guitar." You don't forget which instrument you play when you're in the concert zone. Later on, as the band recognizes that they're in a bit of a slump, Coomes seeks redemption in an older song that starts "You only hurt the ones you love...", but after four or five stabs at the chords -- it becomes embarrassing -- gives up and moves into "You fucked yourself." Near the end, Quasi tackles an extended instrumental break -- I think it's "R&B Transmogrification, but can't be sure -- and visibly lacks the coordination required to meld Coomes' blurts of keyboard with Weiss's heavy and syncopated drumming. At one point, he steps out from the keyboard, walks over to the drums and whispers something in Weiss's ear. She smiles tightly -- that "you idiot" kind of smile that every woman wears from time to time, but continues to pound relentlessly at the drums. Coomes seems to have missed an opening, and a few seconds later, when he wanders back to the keyboards, he finds another one and finishes the song.

Quasi offer moments of glory, and Weiss is always fun to watch behind the drums, but the band can't consistently replicate -- let alone transcend -- the twisted, funny, pop beauty of its albums. Let's hope they work their problems out in future shows.

Article and photos by Jennifer Kelly