The group emerged and began playing a groove and then seemed to simply get stuck, like a needle on a record, toggling between two types of songs and one type of singing.
The first category -- typified by brash opener ``The Wrong Way" and ``Blues From Down Here" -- was a droning yet locomotive guitar dirge with singer Tunde Adepimbe testifying in an impassioned voice as he skittered energetically across the stage.
The second style was more uptempo, often played in a jittery six by drummer Jaleel Bunton , with Adepimbe and genial guitarist-singer Kyp Malone doing a high-low vocal counterpoint as bassist-keyboardist Gerard Smith added a few electronic fillips, and David Sitek wailed away on his guitar, which inexplicably had chimes attached to it .
Of the 14 songs they performed, literally 12 of them began, had a bridge, or ended with Adepimbe singing some variation of the phrase ``ooh, ooh, ooh." The tempo and cadence would change but only occasionally would there be anything resembling a hook to differentiate one set of coos from another.
A handful of tunes found the needle mercifully jumping out of the groove and advancing a melodic idea or dynamic shift, including the wildly energetic punk sensibility of ``Staring at the Sun" and the sultry, funky ``Wolf Like Me," both of which whipped the crowd into a frenzy.
Openers Grizzly Bear came out to chime in on hand percussion near the conclusion of the 80- minute show. But by then, adding to the density of the sound didn't help illuminate what was so special about it, only what was so overwhelming.
