Chuck Roth, a.k.a. watergh0st, held the late-night audience in suspense as his hands flew across the fretboard of his electric guitar. The music Roth made fell somewhere else, part of and yet separate from rock, jazz, folk. The genre it might belong to didn’t matter. It mattered only that the music connected.
Roth’s set closed out a night of resonant, energetic music at Cafe Nine, delivered with great spirit to a small audience that gave the bands who played a theater’s worth of attention. Each act earned that focus in its own way.
First, New Haven’s own Big Sigh — Reena Yu on drums, Victor Pocz on bass, Laura Abreu on keyboard, and Peter Omalyev on guitar and vocals — performed a set of originals that brought together smart pop and punk energy to keep the room buzzing. Yu’s driving drums and Pocz’s pulsing bass propelled the music forward, while Omalyev’s intricate guitar parts added a little rhythmic complication as they laid down the songs’ harmonic structures. Abreu’s keyboards, a calm within the storm, filled out the band’s sound while also serving as a counterpoint to the rasp in Omalyev’s voice.
The band members smiled all the way through their set, engaging with the crowd with off-kilter, disarming banter. As people came into Cafe Nine, they moved closer to the stage. Heads bobbed. Couples stood with their arms around each other.
“I feel a closeness,” Pocz said, beaming. “Who’s a dog person?” A few people raised their hands. “Sorry to all you cat people out there, but we have a bond we can talk about.” Little talk was needed after a set as warm and upbeat as theirs.
Next, the New York City-based Femcel — Jane on bass, Elle on guitar, and Jagger on drums — unleashed their own set of raw punk, beginning with a song with the lyrics “excuse me / you’re standing on my neck.” Jagger’s drumming revved the engine for Jane’s thick bass lines and Elle’s piercing guitar as all three took on vocal duties, barked in true punk style.
The band’s full commitment to scuzzy riffs, pounding rhythms, shouted vocals, and a whole lot of fun paid off, as the audience cheered every song. In between songs, Jane and Elle coated their banter in a sly attitude altogether fitting with the tone of the songs, keeping it light without sanding down the edges, whether they were thanking people for listening or admonishing the crowd on the problems of going to parties in water towers.
“Everybody makes mistakes,” Jane said halfway through the band’s set. “This is not a Hannah Montana song.”
“Yeah, this one’s called ‘Whoops!’ ” Elle said.
Visuals — on the Cafe Nine stage, a solo act of Andrew Fox — then gave the audience a luscious set of pop originals. Much of the instrumentation was pre-programmed, letting Fox play with some tasty keyboard textures and drum sounds, but the connection then came from his solid, elegant guitar playing and a strong singing voice that conveyed everything the songs required. All of these elements revealed Fox first and foremost as a top-flight songwriter, with catchy hooks to reel the audience in and then a series of small, pleasing musical surprises to keep the ear engaged.
“I usually play with a band. Tonight I get to not play with a band,” he said. “I miss them. The banter is much better.” His easy amiability and laid-back humor (“this last song is about me driving a delivery van. it’s called ‘Delivery Man.‘”) won the audience over fast and kept them listening throughout.
“It’s been a wonderful evening. I’m enjoying myself and I hope you are too,” he said toward the end of his set. The cheers from the audience suggested they were.
The general vibes of the three bands that preceded watergh0st did not prepare the audience for Roth’s set. Roth started without a word, launching straight into some of the most acrobatic guitar playing this reporter has seen in quite a while. Harmonic structures, melodic figures, and zigzagging rhythms flew out of the speakers as Roth worked the instrument, letting his languid vocals float over the top, a soothing and contrasting element against the guitar’s frenetic energy.
The music demanded the audience become silent to hear it, and before long, they did, as Roth’s complex musical ideas and sophisticated technique, in the end, packed a direct emotional punch, to overall hypnotic effect. Roth called the performance a mini-set, but the music he performed contained more ideas than most other bands’ entire albums do. Those ideas landed as they did because the audience opened its ears wide to receive them.
Roth himself acknowledged as much. “Thanks for your attention, your time, your presence,” he said at the end of his set. “All the things that come with being a human in a room.”