Strange Pleasure rocks End of the World fans

One thing is for sure: They sure have come out on top.

At the “End of the World” festival in Orono Saturday night, Strange Pleasure brought in a flock of loyal fans and made many more. The band’s fusion of rock and a dab of the blues make them one of the best local bands to perform.

Strange Pleasure made a conscious effort to play their take on this year’s Bumstock theme, the end of the world. The band’s set was superb, playing tunes ranging in mood from joyful to deeply sad.

Strange Pleasure is a five-piece band based in Portland. Its members met each other two years ago at the University of Maine’s Orono campus. All but one still plays with the band.

Taking this year off from school, Strange Pleasure members Dennis Gaines, rhythm guitar; Keith Mann, bass guitar; Richard Corson, lead guitar; Ryan Cyr, drummer and vocals; and John Clavette, vocals and guitar, decided to move to Portland. Ryan Waning, a founding member who plays harmonica, is no longer with the group.

Without the harmonica, the band has more or less redefined its style, showing some inspiration from the Allman Brothers, as well as a little of Phish and the Beatles.

“We made a more self-conscious effort to go along with the theme,” Clavette said. “We tried to end the set with more of the spacey songs.”

“Silver Pearl,” one of the slower tunes, was especially intriguing. The band performed the song about love without forcing the notes. They took their time, cradling the music and the lyrics.

The band wouldn’t be Strange Pleasure without the presence of Corson. His fingers flew through the strings like a spider weaving a web. He caught the right chords but gave them his own interpretation.

Strange Pleasure’s cover song, “Fire on the Mountain,” is an original of the Grateful Dead. Not a follower of the Dead, I nevertheless found it to be the most powerful song of the weekend that has continued to stick in my head.

The song’s imagery was conveyed through the music and repetition of hypnotic lyrics. The tune was lovely and foreboding at the same time. The sense of danger and destruction and fury of fire on a mountaintop, created through the dark and pacing chords of Corson, gave the song the anxiety it needed to propel the eerie lyric “Fire! There’s fire on the mountain!”

The music faded away into a seemingly chaotic Strange Pleasure version of a cappella, in which each member lent his own distinct vocals. The funky melody slowly evolved into a truly harmonic version of the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”

What better way to end the world?

In the afterworld, there is always redemption, and the band found that in its last song, “Your World,” a fairly upbeat and lively song with dark hints. The lyrics, “I’m sitting on top of your world / To see if it’s high enough,” brought the suppression out of “Fire on the Mountain,” suggesting there is life after a death.

Stan Dankoski is a junior at the University of Maine at Orono and an intern at the NEWS.