It would be really funny if Vivian Girls had played the American Folk Art Museum instead....

Yesterday I was planning to watch noise rockers Polvo at the South Street Seaport. I went to the seaport and found out the show had been postponed and moved only after getting drenched in the heavy rain. Luckily Vivian Girls were playing at the Whitney Museum so I took the 4 train uptown to 86th street and walked down. I arrived a bit late to the show. Hundreds of people huddled into the basement and courtyard of the Whitney browsing through art books in the gift shop as Vivian Girls played. It was an odd performance space for a show, and Vivian Girls played a loud but relatively immobile set.

We've been having really bad luck with weather lately -- storm season at the end of July? I don't think anybody was prepared for it, because a lot of concerts have been getting rained on or rained out, much to our dismay. Last night was no different. We were scheduled to see Polvo and Obits at South Street Seaport, but it rained hard enough that the show got moved to Brooklyn Bowl and scheduled for 3 hours later. Instead of waiting around for that to happen and having a really late night, I turned and headed uptown to the Whitney Museum for the Vivian Girls show -- and good thing, too: I got to see new bands, a new venue, and have a really different concert experience.

When I got to the Whitney, the show had just begun. These Are Powers were playing their first song of the night, and people were packed into the room. Security wasn't letting people downstairs because of over-crowding, so I had to wait for a few minutes for people to leave and just listen to the music. These Are Powers are a Brooklyn and Chicago-based noise rock band, whose signature style includes using polyrhythm to experiment with their music. Anna Barie, the lovely lead singer, threw herself around the small performance space and screamed her heart out for the audience, putting all her emotion into what's been described as their "electro-primitive stamp on industrial music." To me, it sounded like a mash-up mix of MIA and industrial music. It was oddly fit for moving your feet, dancing around -- and the audience took heed. There was a group of girls (I still don't know if they're directly associated with the band) who were dressed in metallic spandex and sparkling gold dresses and underwear over leggings and crazy makeup who were doing choreographed dance moves in a pack of 8 or so, taking space in the crowd to create their own show and making it an interactive experience.

During the set, I managed to make my way outside onto the little patio that was actually behind where the bands were playing. It was hot and over-crowded inside and there was no way that I would be able to see, so the experience I had watching the show was a little bit different. I saw it happen from behind the bands, looking through the glass window at where the audience was facing me and the rest of the people outside. The sound was muffled and I had to step inside to hear it clearly, but it added a really interesting dynamic to the whole show.

Vivian Girls were on next. The trio is a group of seriously bad-ass girls based out of Brooklyn -- Cassie Ramone, Ali Koehler, and Kickball Katy. Their indie rock style reminds me at first listen of the Veronicas, but they're less constructed than that. Halfway through the performance, I had a revelation as Katy was rocking out on drums: I've seen this band before. Last summer, Vivian Girls opened for Tilly and the Wall at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Back then, I'd loved their music, but their stage show had been seriously lacking. At that point they'd been a band for only just over a year, and they were three girls on a big stage who didn't know how to use the space, even to fill it with their awesome music. Last night, I felt like I was seeing a totally different band. The space was much more suited to them: they were on the same level as the audience, crowded in by people, and if it hadn't been in an art museum, I might have thought it was a friend's basement. They had a lot of fun with it, rocked out with the crowd, and smiled all the way through the show. I would definitely love to see them again -- but hopefully this time from the front row and facing them.