There’s something faintly surreal about seeing Tim Midgett and Andy Cohen together onstage again.
Five and a half years after Bottomless Pit played their last (and first) Seattle show, their recent Northwest engagement—Friday, April 13 at the Sunset and the following night at Bellingham’s Shakedown—felt like a long time coming, but it also felt as familiar as a reunion with a long-lost friend. Midgett and Cohen share the kind of unassuming musical chemistry that can only come from playing together for, in their case, 27 years. At the same time, their distinct personas—Midgett’s earnest soulfulness, Cohen’s dry, unflinching stoicism—transported me instantly back to my early years as a Seattle resident, around the turn of the millennium, when local appearances by their previous band Silkworm were common enough that they would’ve been easy to take for granted if they weren’t so singularly powerful.
These echoes of the past were all the more remarkable considering how much has in fact changed, starting with the tragic loss of Silkworm drummer Michael Dahlquist in 2005. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this senseless and inescapable event is the central thread running through Bottomless Pit’s three releases, particularly 2007 debut Hammer of the Gods, and maybe it’s that vivid awareness of life’s frailty that makes Midgett and Cohen’s new band such a different entity. Where Silkworm was brawling, lusty, and acerbic, the Pit is intricate, with Midgett’s baritone and Cohen’s guitar maintaining a delicate push and pull with each other and with drummer Chris Manfrin (ex-Seam) and bassist Brian Orchard (ex-.22) that is not unlike the approach of Bedhead or The New Year. Lyrically, there is a directness and vulnerability that was especially striking in the intimate setting of the Shakedown, watching Midgett deliver what could be the group’s manifesto, “We always want a more elegant way to say it, but sometimes it’s best just to lay it bare,” in “The Cardinal Movements”.
That’s not to say Bottomless Pit is morose or humorless; far from it. The band’s name itself is cryptically amusing (to me, at least), and Cohen’s wry observation “I think that I wished that we would remain; my impression was wrong, and yours was the same” in the narrative torrent of “Summerwind” made me smile at the Sunset as it does on record. There was also some situational levity that night, when Cohen, after repeated shocks from his vocal mic, solicited a sock from the audience to use as insulation (lucky for him, he supplied his own before the sweaty crowd obliged). And then there were both nights’ renditions of “Happy Birthday”, the second rather more charmingly off-key, dedicated to Chris Rasmussen of bill-mates Police Teeth.
Bottomless Pit is instrumentally “denser” than most of Silkworm’s ouevre following the 1994 departure of guitarist/vocalist Joel Phelps, and it was interesting to finally resolve some lingering questions about who’s playing which part, particularly on some songs where the baritone and guitar occupy confusingly similar frequency ranges. The band is also more overtly “postpunk” than the trio-era Silkworm. Manfrin’s propulsive, krautrocky drumming brings to mind Joy Division’s Stephen Morris, and the lead melodic role frequently played by Midgett’s baritone recalls that group’s Peter Hook. Midgett seemed perfectly at home in what’s become his signature sound, an aluminum baritone played through two foot-operated digital delay pedals. Still, on the rare occasions when Cohen unleashed a scorching, fluid solo, he left no doubt that, as I yelled into my pal Aram’s ear at the Sunset, he remains The Hebrew Hendrix.
The two nights featured non-overlapping setlists—a nice touch for diehards who attended both shows—that were evenly split between previously released and new material. Thus we were treated to a preview of eight songs destined for the forthcoming album, all but one of which (“Fleece”) were new to me. They ranged from a midtempo slow-burner (something about a “Trench”, maybe? Calling anyone who got a photo of the setlist…) to several energetic rockers, and who could forget “Bare Feet” (played, fittingly, while Andy was sockless in Seattle) with lyrics apparently written by esteemed EPB contributor Tom Kipp?! Fans of the band’s previous work will not be disappointed.
Still, the highlights for me were aching Seattle opener “Red Pen” and the closers “Leave the Light On” and “38 Souls”, both epic and cathartic meditations on loss, denial, and the letting go, but from completely different angles. Cohen’s blistering, backbreaking Neil Young-isms on the latter song, delivered in typically inscrutable fashion, are still echoing in my head a week later.
Seeing these landmark shows, and spending time with Bottomless Pit’s catalogue on the turntable, drove home the fact that on my private island, this band is one of theee biggest things in contemporary rock. But it also rekindled my old wild-hair notion that I could almost imagine them being huge in the broader indie-rock universe (a parallel one, perhaps), given the last decade’s postpunk revivalism and the Pit’s towering superiority to the most prominent avatars of that movement. I know, “success” and artistic merit are barely on speaking terms, but there was a hot minute when Hammer of the Gods was getting modest airplay on KEXP; both of their full-lengths have gotten positive reviews in Pitchfork, and even the Stranger managed to find a few nice things to say about them.
Back in reality, of course, it’s been clear from the get-go that age, life circumstances, and inclination precluded the kind of scorched-earth touring and promotion for the Pit that Silkworm undertook in the ‘90s. And really, as long as they keep making music, I’m fine with that. Silkworm was the soundtrack to some life-changing events in my early Seattle years that taught me, among other things, never to assume that the future will resemble the past, that the moment you’re living in is anything but ephemeral. I never missed a Silkworm show after that, and I’ll never miss Bottomless Pit if they play within reasonable traveling distance. Let’s just hope we Northwesterners don’t have to wait another five and a half years for that to happen.
