This past weekend, two of Seattle’s most “out there” bands on the rise, Unnatural Helpers, who recently signed with Hardly Art and the Lights opened up for Brooklyn powerhouse band, Obits. It was a much hyped and talked about show beforehand and writer Greg Franklin made it inside to cover it. After the jump, check out his review. Seattle’s Unnatural Helpers opened Saturday night’s show, and although I only caught two of their songs, they were stellar. Some groups have the ability to write catchy, high energy jams that seem completely effortless but stick in your head, and Unnatural Helpers have that gift in abundance. Singing drummers, adorable bass players, and guitarists that playfully glare and try to one up each other on rock moves? These are all plusses in my book. What I saw was a bashing, screaming set of punk rock that perfectly teetered between well-rehearsed and sloppy, and I cursed myself for not showing up 30 minutes earlier.Seattle’s the Lights (who are touring with the Obits) were up second and played a set that grasped at lots of different styles without ever settling on one. On record, the band’s penchant for the Fall’s ranting and rambling comes through crystal clear, but live, they bounced between catchy, simple riff songs that a good majority of the audience was bopping along to, and some darker material that seemed like it borrowed fairly heavily from your typical Northwestern rock band playbook. Looking like Cream-era Eric Clapton, Craig Chambers has one of those perfect post-punk voices; perfect in its imperfection at times, and grating in the same regards at others. Chambers’ guitar is probably the star of the show, never fully blown out or distorted, but loose and jangly and, at times, sounding like the thinnest, rustiest strings imaginable were strung across his guitar. Although this may sound nitpicky, PJ Rogalski is a competent drummer who relies far too much on busy fills that steal from the momentum of the songs. Some of the Lights’ songs could really shine (no pun intended) with some simpler, bashing drumwork that eased up on the fills and showcased Chambers’ skronky guitar work. All in all, the Lights hit more than they missed, but it was a fairly uneven set that was rewarding but a little frustrating.New York’s Obits are still a relatively new band, and are overshadowed by singer Rick Froberg’s output in seminal bands Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu, and (most recently) Hot Snakes. Whereas Pitchfork and Jehu both relied on absolute math-y freakouts, and Hot Snakes was much more of a powerhouse, chaos-driven riff rock band, Obits are on one hand the most straight forward band that Froberg has been a part of, and could very well be the weirdest. On first listen, the band revels in pushing simple elements into stranger territory, relying on a pounding garage-surf rhythm section as their foundation, but further inspection finds the band sprinkling reverb drenched dual-guitar interplay in the mix, and topping it all off with Froberg’s raw-throated howl (thank God the man is still angry after all these years!). The basis of the songs is textbook garage/blues, but when Froberg and guitarist/vocalist Sohrab Habibion start to intertwine their guitar lines, you see where the Obits really glisten. Froberg is accustomed to a two guitar attack (having shared the stage in all his former projects with Rocket From the Crypt/Night Marchers frontman John “Speedo” Reis), but it’s refreshing to see him with a new partner. Froberg has always fit perfectly into the working man’s rock role, sweating, head down, plowing straight through a set of hooky numbers that walked the line between the quick in-and-out two minute rocker and the more expansive numbers that gave Froberg and Habibion room to do what they do best; start out with simple patterns and build upon the tension of the two guitars. I’m not entirely sure what Froberg’s set up is, but the man coaxes some downright spooky, haunted sounds from that old, beat-up Harmony. The strangest part of the evening, though, had to be the crowd; While a good portion of the audience was obviously some of the older-school rocker crowd who were probably fans of Pitchfork, Jehu, or Hot Snakes, there was also a really strange weekend warrior contingent in attendance. Ranging from “dudes who were obviously in town for a conference” (who shows up to Neumos in a suit while still wearing their lanyards from their conference?”), groups of older guys in Tommy Bahama gear who were visibly out of their element, to the “Seriously, get out of our way when we’re dancing” trio, featuring the Kelly Clarkson look-alike who ended up eating sizable amounts of floor directly in front of Froberg at least 4 times, having her friends help her up, and then bopping back along to the Obits backbeat without so much as dusting herself off. To her credit, if you’re going to be a drunken asshole, be a drunken asshole with endurance.-Greg Franklin