The Sunburned Hand of the Man

By the time The Sunburned Hand of the Man took the stage, the majority of the crowd was fully experiencing "The Lost Lake-Soaked Liver of the Man," thus setting the stage for one of the raddest experimental music experiences I have been witness to.

Sunburned opened with a jangly, desert pop rock song that probably threw most of the avant garde nerd patrol audience for a loop, but confusion soon transformed into glee as The Sunburned Hand Of the Man sprawled into the remainder of their set with enough dizzying free jazz to make Captain Beefheart feel about as challenging as Michael Jackson.

Guitars would stray into psychadelic jamming and noisemaking as the rhythm section banged and plucked away in pure improvisational glory -- all incoherent but in the most natural way. What sounded like the beginning of an actual song would suddenly change courses and turn into feedback soundscapes. This would in turn transform into scattered song structure, yet never quite acquire any form or direction.

Tension and beauty were certainly the interchangeable themes of the sounds created by The Sunburned Hand Of The Man. Kind of like winning the lotto on the same day as your mother's funeral, you just can't quite decide how you should feel.

It's easy to be sucked into the mood of such noise, but then again, throwing the audience a hook every now and then may have certainly worked to their advantage. There's really only so long that you can listen to some guy fool around on the bass before you start to lust for some actual songwriting.