Kyle Parkinson

My article on my class’s five-year reunion:

05 Years Later
by Kyle Parkinson

Well it’s a new decade, and I spent the entirety of December reading “Best of the Decade” lists to figure out what the hell just happened. I’m not saying it was all a blur, but it did leave me standing there blinking and trying to make sense of it all. We graduated high school, watched terrorism come to America, earned college degrees, entered the real world, updated our statuses, and pinched our pennies. The whole thing seemed almost choreographed as a crash course in growing up. “They’re loading up the car to head to college; cue the bombings! They’re beginning to plan for their careers and financial futures; sink the markets!” Now here we are, taking what seems like a quick breather as we flip the calendar and realize that holy shit, our five-year reunion is a few months away.

I’ve done the math several times on my graphing calculator, and I can’t for the life of me figure out how it’s been five years. We’re still just getting started, right? We’ve still got our whole lives in front of us, right? Yet this little checkpoint comes almost as a reminder that we’re now squarely in the thick of things. We’ve had a significant, measureable amount of time in the real world (“we’ve been out longer than we’ve been in”), time to forge our paths and change our minds and relocate and reconsider. Some have reached greatness already, while others are still figuring out the formula, surely to hit upon it by the ten-year reunion (right?).

So we’ll gather on the Green and around the pong tables, some of us rusty and some of us disturbingly unrusty, but what will we all talk about? The ubiquity of Facebook and other social networks has made it nearly impossible to be in the dark about our 700 closest friends. So instead of “What have you been up to?” it might be more like “Who was that girl in that pic of you in Cabo? Is she single? Oh, she’s your fianceé … cool.” And then another Keystone becomes another Keystone until we’re all right back in that comfortable zone.

I still don’t know what exactly we do at reunions. Is there a set program or schedule? Something for which we need to plan ahead? I guess reunions used to serve as a way to really catch up with everyone you haven’t seen or heard from in the past couple years. A time to trade stories and connect on similar new interests and pursuits, but again, don’t we already know all of those things via the Internet? I’m on something like five social networks, and I get requests and updates every day from people I surely would’ve forgotten about in the non-Internet world. And so I’m kept in touch, regardless of any effort or lack thereof.

And then when I start thinking about the impending reunion, I find myself wondering if it will feel any different than coming back from an off-term. I mean, it doesn’t seem like it was that long ago, and I don’t necessarily feel out of touch at all. Sure, maybe I haven’t spoken to certain people in a while, but in general people don’t really speak to each other as much as they used to, so a long as I know the latest news, I feel like I’m moving along just fine. Not to mention, I’ve seen about 50% of the graduating class in one city or another. Showing up at the right bar in New York City can be a Dartmouth jackpot and will forever amaze me at the tiny school’s ability to shrink an enormous city.

But don’t get me wrong, the reunion does provide a unique opportunity to do it all back on the original grounds. It’ll be kind of neat sleeping in Bissell again; like a fantasy camp set in the early 2000s. And when I think about it, I actually do miss the Collis pasta (now I have to make my own pasta every night of the week). And instead of classes and studying, my only responsibility will be to avoid running into any tween-looking kids who are now somehow college graduates.

So when June comes along and I’m driving up to Hanover, here’s hoping all the nervous anxiety of being a twenty-something is replaced by a brief respite of the aforementioned fantasy camp. College, here we come.

My Resident Advisor review of the Big Pink in Brooklyn:

The Big Pink in Brooklyn
by Kyle Parkinson

Rating: 2 / 5

Playing the second of two New York shows, The Big Pink set up at Music Hall of Williamsburg just before 11:30 PM on December 4th. While their Thursday night Manhattan show sold out, the crowd seemed thin at Music Hall, unfortunately setting the stage for what would be a lackluster evening of music.

The London-based electro rock band started strong with strobe lights flickering and a building wall of distortion before breaking into “Too Young to Love,” a perfect lead-in to what seemed like was going to be a propulsive set. As the song wound down to a lingering distortion, the newly energized crowd roared over the noise, and the band transitioned right into “Frisk.” Unfortunately the music drowned out the vocals, and the energy that had built up in the crowd died down into a bit of confusion.

The ensuing uncertainty began to spotlight the main problem with The Big Pink’s live show: this is a band in flux, transitioning between styles and acclimating themselves to a newfound audience. A punk aesthetic of sleeveless tees and skinny jeans was tempered by a darker industrial feeling: all black instruments, continued strobes (and little other stage lighting) and even a headbanging bassist.

The band carried on nonetheless, segueing a distorted bassline right into “At War with the Sun,” but the relatively energetic tempo of the song did little to pull the crowd out of the lull into which it had sunk. Luckily, the ensuing drum-pad intro of “Velvet” perked up a good portion of the audience, as they knew they’d soon hear something they came for. In an attempt to continue the momentum, the band moved on to album-opener “Crystal Visions,” which, in the recorded version, builds up to a powerful peak. The live payoff missed, however, and it wasn’t until two songs later—”Dominos”—that the crowd was fully resuscitated. The poppiest of the band’s repertoire, the song turned out to be the show’s highlight, as the crowd energy hit its peak for the evening. The moment was short-lived, however, as the band subsequently ended their set at a brisk fifty minutes, sans encore.

Despite technical mastery and what could have been an intriguing visual aesthetic, The Big Pink came across as a band torn between two identities: a harder, darker edge, and a pop sensibility which has thus far gained them most of their fans. Given the high quality of their debut album, one can only hope the band’s live performance soon grows into something matching its studio prowess.

My Resident Advisor review of Fever Ray in New York:

Fever Ray in New York
by Kyle Parkinson

Rating: 4.5 / 5

An overflowing crowd waited amidst blue light, a low drone came across the soundsystem, incense quickly filled the air with a nearly opaque wave of smoke. Karen Dreijer Andersson and her four band mates took the stage as costumed silhouettes and remained as such for the first several songs. It was exactly the beginning of a sold-out Fever Ray show at Webster Hall that you’d expect.

As the self-titled debut suggests, the mood was eerie and emotive, but with a flair for the theatrical. A dozen antique lamps pulsated in time with the beat before lasers cut through the smoke, shedding the most light we’d see on the band. Dreijer discarded her massive fur headdress, while the other band members writhed to the music in Kabuki-inspired costumes. Opening with “If I Had a Heart,” they played each song from their ten-track album, adding impressive (if not unexpected) covers of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds (“Stranger than Kindness”) and Vashti Bunyan (“Here Before”). To build the energy, Dreijer’s guitarist wielded his instrument high in the air and at one point took up a scepter, creating a nightmarishly memorable visual.

One-half of Swedish electro pop duo the Knife, Dreijer eschewed the spotlight for much of her early career. The band toured only once—in support of their 2006 album, Silent Shout—but they announced an ensuing hiatus during the string of shows. The time off has clearly been good to Dreijer, allowing her to build her new band but maintain the mystery and coolness, both in music and personality. The band didn’t speak a word on stage as they proceeded through the twelve songs in exactly an hour, sans encore. And despite the relatively short set, the crowd buzzed with excitement as it filed out of the venue, content with a stellar live show that lived up to the unique music.

My Resident Advisor review of Michna at Mercury Lounge:

Michna in New York City
by Kyle Parkinson

Rating: 3.5 / 5

Wind and rain whipped outside Mercury Lounge on a recent Wednesday night as a crowd gathered for the triple-bill of ApSci, Michna, and Cubic Zirconia. Combining sounds of hip-hop, acid house and funk, the lineup offered something for everyone during the evening.

Ghostly International’s Michna started off his set by creating a hypnotic effect as he laid down a pulsating hip-hop beat. The lights morphed to red, and the Brooklyn-based DJ layered in synth flourishes and vocal samples that quickly had the full house rapt. While most of the crowd stood and bobbed their heads, Michna constantly jumped across his array of equipment: three turntables, two laptops, two mixers and an effects processor. He scratched and sampled, deftly pulling the brooding beat in and out.

As the forty-minute set progressed, Michna branched out by introducing everything from acid house melodies to a sampling of ’90s pop clips (think Blues Traveler) into the mix. Throughout the set, he succeeded in maintaining a coherent yet adventurous sound, an indication of his skilled ear.

Known for hosting off-the-wall parties in which he dresses in all varieties of costumes (a traditional Chinese farmer at one party, a David Hasselhoff look-alike at another), Michna kept the focus on the music at Mercury Lounge. In plain clothes and keeping his head down, it felt as if the crowd was glimpsing an obsessive working alone in his lab. Unfortunately, despite Michna’s smart turntablism, the Mercury Lounge crowd seemed simply to be waiting and passively (if not deeply) involved in Michna’s on-stage activities. But with his skill, there’s hope that Michna will very shortly be reaching a much wider audience in venues where he can control the room like he does his decks.