Butane Variations

What is sometimes surprising about Butane Variation’s live sets are how weird and visceral they can become. Sure, some of their recordings are rocking (as a verb) but they don’t prepare you for the noise the four musicians make upon the stage, most recently at Boulder Coffee Company in Rochester, NY. The end of a dozen dates (the band left South Carolina the morning of the 18th to make it to the Boulder show) BV played many new numbers that one can assume will be a part of a new LP planned for a September release.

The band’s first show at Boulder Coffee, on November 18, 2007, ended with the band descending from the stage and serenading the audience on acoustic guitars and blocks of wood. Their second show began this way, singing the mantra “Circle / Triangle / Square” repeatedly amidst verses largely unintelligible, all four band members singing and making noise.

Resuming the pulpit the band played over a dozen songs including the unreleased (and untitled?) song that announces, “I never wrote a song on the electric guitar,” with both electric guitars bending strings and distorting themselves before sweetly “I’m gonna write one for my friends/ Wherever they are.”

The gorgeous “Goldie Hawn” (from the LP) was bracketed by a long story from guitarist/vocalist Phil Weinrobe about the band playing and losing a Frisbee in the ocean, a story which intended to (but did not) explain the song, though as it was one of my two favorite from the first LP I had no complaints. The other favorite, “Big Belly Laugh,” which I chided the band for not playing last time, was dedicated to yours truly and scratched my itch. “Little Debbie” was also called for from some girls dancing in the back who requested it under the title “Kitchen’s On Fire! Kitchen’s On Fire!” due to the song’s lyrics about such a place.

The penultimate “I’ve Been To Heaven (In My Mind)” assured us that “Good were the words coming down.” And good they were. Just before “Heaven” the band eased its way through “Mix Tape Honey,” an ode to lonely listening to songs like itself on lonely partner-made compilations. “When you’re kicked out of your heaven/ Skinned your knee down on the earth/ And you’re singing in your hymnbook/ Sing it down, go ahead, go on.” They passed the hat (or in this case, the large glass tip jar) to offset the free show and we were all happy to toss some dollars into the band’s gas tank, back to New York City, where I trust they are sitting around apartments writing gems like “Honey.”

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