I missed out on quite a few presumably excellent concerts this semester—Isis, the Terrastock Festival in Providence, Mogwai, Part Chimp, Arab Strap, Silver Jews, Minus the Bear, to name a few—but I did manage to catch a few shows here and there. I’ll recap them here, but hopefully when I get my photos in order, I’ll have pictures from a few of these sets.

My friend Ryan Chavez is now the drummer for the Smoking Popes, who I’d heard briefly during their mid-’90s heyday, but who were an alt-rock radio staple for my wife’s high school days in the Chicago suburbs. We caught a date from their reunion tour at the Middle East, and while I can’t say I rushed out to buy any of their records, they put on a good, tight set. It was fun seeing Ryan play a different instrument than his guitar/singing duties in Panic in Detroit, and I hope to catch his former bandmate Melissa Lonchambon’s new band Sharks and Sailors if they ever make it up to New England.

During spring break, two of my grad school compatriots and I drove to New York City to wander around Manhattan for the day and catch the Life and Times at the Mercury Lounge. (For those wondering, I have now seen Shiner or TLAT fifteen times in seven cities—Champaign, Chicago, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and New York—and eight once TLAT finally comes to Boston.) Adam and I got to the club just in time to suffer through the entirety of Langhorne Slim’s lengthy set. Langhorne already seemed to be a bit of an over-eager showman, but bolstered by his local, adoring audience, he used every opportunity to tell inane, rambling lead-ins to his hodge-podge of alt-country, blues, and honky tonk. Naturally, the majority of these fans left after his set.

The Life and Times played another solid set, playing some of the new material destined for their split ten-inch with Nueva Vulcano (the new-ish band from Artur from Aina; he sings in Spanish) and their EP on the Japanese label Stiff Slack, both slated to arrive later this summer. Nothing completely revelatory (I reserve this for the first time I saw “The Egg” and “The Simple Truth,” long in advance of the record), but “Mea Culpa” in particular sounded great. I cannot emphasize enough how much this band needs to come to Boston after their tour of Spain.

I missed out on attending the convergence of notable drone-/psych-/post-rock acts at Terrastock, but I caught Paik, the band I most wanted to see, and a few other acts from the festival playing a warm-up gig at PA’s Lounge. The Kitchen Cynics were actually a one-man band from Scotland, an older, charismatic gentleman who told humorous anecdotes disguised as songs. His guitar work was presumably got him into the Terrastock set, featuring some looped backing parts and intricate arpeggios. Thought Forms, a three-piece “post-rock” band from England, followed this surprise up with a far more typical set, sounding like they’d done their homework on early Paik and more recent Explosions in the Sky records but hadn’t figured out how to make those structures their own. Landing played next, building up small waves of gurgling electronics and shimmering guitar into controlled swells. I would have enjoyed their set a lot more if nagging thoughts about a presentation the next day weren’t pulling me away from the Darla-endorsed Bliss Out.

Paik headlined, focusing on material from their new album Monster of the Absolute. I had only learned of its impending existence when checking out their site before the show, and from a low quality clip of “Phantoms,” I knew I was in for a treat. I had never seen Paik before, but I scored a VHS of a performance circa Corridors during a Parasol clean-up, which showed the band’s affinity for dizzying light shows, but didn’t stray too much from the source material. This time, however, they built up the basic structure of the songs with guitar loops, and then added woozy slabs of feedback over top. The volume was pummeling in a way I haven’t felt since seeing Mogwai a few years back, and I was glad to be sitting in front of the band taking pictures instead of standing with the rest of the crowd. Monster of the Absolute displays some of this layering, but not to the gut-punching depths of the live performance.

Last night I saw Murder by Death, Langhorne Slim, and Metal Hearts at the Middle East. I hadn’t heard too much about Metal Hearts (Pitchfork said they sound like Arab Strap, but that comparison did not come to mind) and perhaps that’s because they’re not exactly memorable. The first few songs had more of a laid-back Modest Mouse meets American Football vibe, but keyboards and saxophone rotated into the set and confirmed that, yes, I was watching background music. Adam and I had already suffered through Langhorne on his home court in NYC, but we watched a few songs to prove to our ladies that our complaints were valid. Lo and behold, they were. He told far fewer stories, but played the same songs, so we left until Murder by Death’s posted start time.

This show marks the first time I’ve seen Murder by Death without a keyboard player (if memory serves, the ninth time overall), and while most of the material didn’t seem lacking, playing “Those Who Stayed” without “Those Who Left” to close the set ended the night on a strange note. I’ll admit that Adam Turla’s voice fits their new western-themed songs far better than their early “pretty” songs like “Intergalactic Menopause” or “Canyon Inn, Room 16,” but it’s rare to see a band take such a drastic shift away from their previous material. Tipped by “Sometimes the Line Walks You,” Johnny Cash and Tom Waits have replaced the Cure and Mogwai as latent reference points on In Bocca Al Lupo. I long for more post-rock inflection to creep into the new material, but the tighter structures are preventing that for the time being.