Review: From rapt silence to cathartic screams, Mission Creek’s Day 2 performers crowd-surfed the line between rage and joy

Night two of Mission Creek, in contrast with the first night’s containment at Hancher, encompassed many venues around the downtown area, a return to previous years’ mad dash of “Creekers” around Iowa City looking for the show that will change their lives, whether that be a new-to-you music act or a local literary hero at the fest’s Lit Walk. I kept seeing people I hadn’t met in real life since pre-pandemic events. This in-person, un-mediated connection is something you don’t know you’ve missed until it returns, and it’s as precious as the performances we attend.

COVID-19 taught us how to live in isolation. We were alone, or confined with only close family to talk to. That fragmentation of community has real consequences, and may in part explain the intense negative political life we’re experiencing. When everyone is in their own pocket universe, how do we connect with others?

Like most attendees, I didn’t stay in one place Saturday night. You had to make hard choices about who to see. If there’s one constant to Mission Creek, it’s that you can stumble onto amazing, life-changing music made by people you’ve never heard of before. For me, it was seeking out old favorites, paired with the shock of the new.

Nat Baldwin

Bassist Nat Baldwin is a Mission Creek veteran whose return is tied to personal relationships with Iowa Citians like Hancher/Mission Creek artistic director Andre Perry. Baldwin is one of the few who has participated both as a musician and author. His Bandcamp page demonstrates the breadth of his work, including free improvisations, combinations of his bass with spoken word from his published works and some of the more conventionally song-based recordings, like his album People Changes.

At Riverside Theatre, he was playing solo, much of it compositions from his 2011 album People Changes. The combination of his expressive tenor voice and the double bass is a modern sort of chamber music. 

Baldwin’s bass playing is rooted in classical technique, but he’s also tapped into the rich harmonic possibilities of overtones, brought out by varying pressure and angle of his bow.

A touchstone of this approach is his cover of Arthur Russell’s song “Another Thought.” Russell was a composer whose cello playing explored the same subtle variations of timbre that result from unconventional bowing. Baldwin played this song every previous time I’ve seen him, most memorably is an unamplified set at Prairie Lights in 2014.

Arthur Russell is an influence on Baldwin, but not the whole story of his music. His tenor voice always follows the fractal curve of emotional expression through vibrato and seamless leaps to falsetto. His voice pairs with the deep, rich sound of his bass. Between conventional songs, he’d leap with both feet into the raw sound of his instrument, subtly manipulating the overtones in rhythmic strokes of open strings.

In the intimate space of the Riverside Theatre, he was playing the whole volume of air in the room, mostly without breaks between pieces. It’s a sit-down theater, which discourages conversation during performances, but even so, the audience was unusually quiet and rapt. As much as any performer I’d seen so far, Baldwin made a closed loop of concentration and focus between his own experience of performance and the attention of the audience. It was lovely, fragile, strong and expressed emotions for which words are a poor substitute.

Younger

The Iowa City music scene is a highly interconnected entity, so when local favorites Younger performed, they were joined by an audience of friends, family and potential future friends. They play their own version of riot grrl/punk rock/pop songs, with deep commitment to craft combined with a giddy sense of fun. A heaving crowd responded with their own playful, thrashing dance. It was a high energy pummeling, like a shiatsu masseuse. 

The moment when Sarah Mannix jumped from the drum throne (to be replaced by guest drummer Joe Ross of other locals The Tanks and SuperSonic Piss) to shout and gesticulate at the crowd was a peak of pure optimistic joy, capped by her jumping into the audience to crowd surf. That stunt can be a mistake, but in this case, Mannix was held aloft by friends and family. More than a stunt, it was a moment of weightless, giddy perfection, a perfect trust fall.

The previous night’s performance by Kim Gordon was in my mind as they played. Did they play harder and with more confidence having witnessed Gordon positively own Hancher Auditorium? I don’t know if it was on Sarah, Amanda and Rachel’s mind, but it’s hard to discount how important Gordon’s work over the decades has given generations of women to take their place front and center. 

Angry Blackmen

Angry Blackmen are two Chicago hip hop emcees whose vocals ride absolutely brutal industrial beats. Again recalling Kim Gordon’s performance, they find their personal power through absolutely insane bass and slow boom bap beats.

Their audience participation track, where the emcees’ shout “Angry!” and the crowd responds “BLACK MEN!” was a beautifully awkward moment. Before the song began, member Quentin Branch said, “Sure, are a lot of white people here,” with a laugh. Someone in the crowd replied back, “It’s Iowa.” He admonished the crowd to not feel uncomfortable shouting “BLACK MEN!”

It was funny, but it connected the audience to the performers. In the current political climate, the angry Black man (or woman) is a tired trope of the rightwing, and Angry Blackmen appropriate that trope and magnify it, to holding it up as a lie. Being angry is the only rational response to the politics of the moment, and Angry Blackmen didn’t seek to intimidate the white audience, but to connect with the righteous anger against the government that most Americans now feel.

Sharing anger in this context is unifying, not divisive. Racism was constructed in the United States by the ruling class to divide and conquer white and Black people. Racism gives white people a focus for the anger that otherwise would correctly be aimed at the ruling class.

When it unites, shared anger potentially becomes shared joy, and the heaving, sweaty crowd at Gabe’s were definitely feeling it.

Mannequin Pussy

In true Mission Creek fashion, I walked into the Englert to see Mannequin Pussy knowing absolutely nothing about them. And for the first half hour or so, I perceived them as a noisy pop band, with some great songs crooned and shouted by inimitable front-person Missy Dabice. The way Dabice strutted on stage was pure rock and roll. As Kim Gordon did the previous night, she used sensuality and flirtation to command attention, not to surrender to the male gaze.

After several songs I almost left to find something else to watch. Then, things changed. Instead of pop-metal with overtones of shoegaze, Mannequin Pussy tore into absolutely ferocious hardcore punk songs. In between songs Missy Dabice proved her absolute mastery of the crowd in a couple of extended political rants, calling out the billionaires seeking to divide Americans from each other, to keep them weak and exploitable.

It’s gutsy to pause the momentum of a rock show that way, but it was absolutely perfect. Dabice gave explicit focus to the anger at the center of Mannequin Pussy’s music. Her rants increased the excitement of the moment instead of diffusing it.

Towards the end, she made a speech about the empty hole filled with rage that Americans feel, and about how politicians channel that rage to pit citizens against each other. Dabice invited the audience to channel that rage by asking us all to scream together. That scream was the absolute peak of their set, and it was unifying and joyous.

Musical artists do not create their art from scratch, there’s always precursors and influences. Mannequin Pussy would not exist if not for Gordon, Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, and all the other feminist punk pioneers. That culture, a clear connection from the past, through us, to the future, is crucial and liberating. When Missy Dabice screams, you can also hear Kathleen Hannah’s scream.

Dabice’s exhorted the audience to “Pledge allegiance to yourselves, your community, and the people who actually give a fuck about you.” In that moment she made clear what she most wants her music to accomplish, and, perhaps, the overall theme of Mission Creek: It is about community. It is about showing up for each other.

Maybe rock and roll can’t save us in these desperate times. But anything that connects us, whether it be demonstrations or phone banks or rock shows, is what will, in the end, help us survive the insane shitshow we find ourselves in the middle of.