The Forms
Union Hall
11.15.08

Some bands pop onto the scene and make a big splash. They’re new and looked at with loads of potential, but when they fail to grow exponentially, people stop caring and move on to the next big thing. With the increasing number of blogs, and ways to easily access the ever-growing flux of music out there, the challenge for a band to stay relevant in a scene becomes harder and harder. A band could burst onto the top of the scene the way Clap Your Hands Say Yeah did a few years ago, but then get buried by all of the new hip bands a year later, unless they really keep themselves fresh in fans minds.

A few years ago, The Forms were one of those bands breaking onto the New York scene, though not to the extent of CYHSY or any other major recent act like MGMT or Vampire Weekend. With a tight sound occupied by angular guitar and keys, and an ever present rhythm section, there was good reason to think The Forms could become one of New York’s next big bands, but it didn’t happen. They were never drowning in unfairly unreachable hype like The Rapture or CYHSY, so they never really had so suffer a backlash, but The Forms have seemingly been forgotten since releasing their self-titled sophomore album.

Since then, they’ve lost the bass, and begun experimenting with more ambient qualities. On Saturday night, they headlined Union Hall, and everything that made them great the last time I saw them a couple years ago was still there. In fact, they had gotten much much better. In a week where I had already scene 4 shows/11 bands (including the 2 bands preceding them), The Forms still managed to stand out and impress.

After a good set by Javelins, The Forms began as guitarist Brendan Kenny alone on stage, fiddling with knobs, creating a weird swarm of sonic ambiance, before being joined by rambunctious drummer Matt Walsh, and singer/keyboardist Alex Tween. Once the trio had all taken their place, the brilliant melody of “Redgun” began to infect the crowd. From that moment on, any doubt I had that this band was still one of the best in Brooklyn, was completely erased.

While bloggers are racing to find the next great band, and thrusting loads of mediocre ones in our faces, they hardly ever give a band a decent amount of time to develop. Bands like Black Kids, MGMT, and Vivian Girls have all shown promise, but blogs have built them up too high and too fast, before these bands could really fine tune themselves before being hit with a backlash. Meanwhile, it sure seems like fine-tuning is exactly what The Forms have gone and done.