Donewating 6-yr anniversary show: Envelope, Two Cow Garage, Moon High, Adulture

(Late post of last week's show...)

I don’t pretend to be a connoisseur of the Columbus hip-hop scene. In fact, my knowledge pretty much ends with a passing familiarity of the Weightless Recordings roster and Wes Flexner’s entertaining ramblings on local music blog Donewaiting.com. So I can’t really compare Envelope’s performance for Donewaiting’s six-year anniversary show at Skully’s last weekend with other hometown rappers’ performances. But man does this guy put on a great show.

First off, it’s refreshing to see someone put so much time and energy into an actual stage show, as opposed to just getting up there, staring at the ground and going through the motions. Envelope (aka Tony Collinger) billed the night as “Envelope presents The Corner Store,” and he meant that quite literally. The guy constructed a huge set (mostly out of cardboard, I think) for the stage--what looked like a corner store stocked with cereal, ranch dressing, Magnum condoms, chips, etc. It made for a long set changeover, but worth the wait.

Collinger comes off like a lovable goofball bounding around the stage--a far cry from ultra-macho, egomaniacal emcees obsessed with proclaiming their lyrical superiority and sexual prowess. He’s humble, yet highly entertaining, with a self-deprecating sense of humor. (On one track from 2008’s Blueprint-produced Shark Bolt, he says, “I’ll even admit that I’m annoyed when I hear too much of my own voice.”)

It was definitely a sloppy show. Collinger has a great flow but can’t sing for his life; luckily he usually asked the crowd to help out with the sing-along refrains (e.g. “I’m not poor, I’m just broke, broke as hell”). He also screwed up one of my favorite lines from “Oh My My My...,” a complaint about the letdowns of science: “They got wisdom like the Masons lack secrets.” But he made up for it with some other choice nuggets: “American Apparel’s owned by a sexual predator”; “Lost my swagger so I started jogging/ Beer gut, not so awesome”; “If we’re so smart, and nothing is left unexplored/ Then why’s it 2009 and I don’t have my hoverboard?”

He’s also more acutely perceptive than he gives himself credit for. “Day Dream Nation” does a pretty good job of diagnosing society’s ills and skewering the culprits--a group from which he doesn’t exclude himself.

And while an Envelope album is all about the smirky, everyman lyrics, an Envelope show is more about the experience. Just a playful, talented dude dropping rhymes, shouting out to his friends (like onstage deejay Detox) and acting out tongue-in-cheek skits with other friends (like The Catalyst). A fellow TOP critic described Envelope’s last album as quintessentially “Columbus,” and that goes for the Whetstone grad himself, too. Collinger unapologetically embraces this city, and we’d be right to return the favor.

Two Cow Garage gave one of its typical gerbil-on-a-speedball performances, with all the gusto and grit we’ve come to expect from the band, along with a near-overdose of catchy choruses. I’ve been doling out ego boosters to these guys a lot recently, so I won’t go on and on, but I have no qualms calling Two Cow the best live rock band in Columbus. Oh, and the drummer smashed half of his drum set on the last song.

I didn’t stay for laptop duo Adulture’s closing set, but the young’uns played some cool stuff in between acts, doing impressive live edits of Portishead and more. Moon High, a newish folk-inspired act I’ve been enjoying, opened the show with one of the most upbeat songs I’ve heard from the usually super-placid band. I’m excited to hear more of that. Musically, the rest of the set was pretty solid, too, but I tend to think atmosphere is more crucial than usual when watching Moon High perform, and Skully’s garish surroundings seemed to clash with the band’s aesthetic (foot-switchable globe lights, banjo plucking, tranquil songwriting). I’d rather experience the songs at a place like the Treehouse (where the band performed this past Friday with the Couch Forts) than at what someone recently described to me as “Columbus’s version of L.A.”

(Also at The Other Paper)