S PRCSS are one of the coolest bands that I know little about. Their mysterious nature — do a web search and see how much you dig up — makes it quite rad to see them play.

I knew nothing about this band until I saw them, sometime last year, at the Lighthouse (itself a fairly off-the-beaten-path venue). Since then I have managed to piece together bits of information about the group. Seems they were a Philly-based band some time ago, but either broke up or became basically inactive, but have gotten back together at times in the more recent past via collaboration with DC’s Justin Moyer and possibly others. I found copies of a couple of their releases via eMusic and liked them, and was happy to see they were playing last weekend at Comet Ping Pong, opening up for Enon.

(Here’s the gig poster, swiped from here: )

Based on the Comet show Saturday night, it seems like Moyer is more integrated as part of the band, including lead vocals on one song and a pretty definite musical influence on other new songs. “S PRCSS 2K9” sounded a little choppier, more DC, more Dischord, and some of it reminded me more of other J. Moyer projects like Antelope… sort of a post-Lungfish sound which fit pretty well with the weird lyrics that S PRCSS already had.

Further cementing S PRCSS as the new Lungfish was the newspaper handed out after the set by the main singer/guitarist — what’s his name, anyway? — full of metaphysical/anarchist/mystical musings. Great stuff. I look forward to hearing new material by this line-up of S PRCSS in the future and catching them live anytime the opportunity arises. You have to keep on your toes to even know about these performances — they aren’t exactly popping up in emails from ticketmaster.

After S PRCSS I and my friends stuck around for about half of Enon’s set. It wasn’t bad but they are not really my thing; I’d seen them once before and been relatively unimpressed. But it was interesting that I saw them exactly a week after seeing the Van Pelt reunion; Toko Yasuda was not part of that reunion, and had lost her voice for the Enon show. Enon have some good songs and the guitarist has some great effects (when he plays guitar) that remind me of Seth from Les Savy Fav, who are apparently pals with Enon. (And S PRCSS are label-mates of LSF… it is all ridiculously incestuous.)

Anyhow I don’t think Enon are as good as Les Savy Fav, and I think they are way over-reliant on synths and keyboards. But when they play stuff that is less dance-y and more rockin’, I find them to be a pretty decent band, just not a very essential one.

I would have stayed for the whole Enon show but I was exhausted. And there was a late-night follow-up show downtown with Edie Sedgwick and others that I just didn’t have the energy to attend. No real loss, I think… S PRCSS was pretty much good enough for the whole weekend.