Friday, December 13, 9 p.m.
Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL
Madison-based journeyman and experimentalist/bedroom-pop weirdo Tippy plays Rozz-Tox on December 13.
Tippy is the moniker of one Spencer Bible, a Midwestern DIY lifer who has played in such bands as the ecstatic basement-rock duo Big Waves of Pretty, and has recorded music under his own name. As Tippy, Bible approximates pop music from the perspective of a tongue-in-cheek experimentalist. His tracks present huge melodic hooks and float over intertwined synths and percussion lines, but something always seems a little off-kilter. Maybe a stomping pop workout will devolve into a spoken-word interlude, or break into a passage of sampled movie dialogue or audio from an obscure thrifted cassette tape. Maybe the lyrics will demand some closer scrutiny in all their bizarre internal logic and hilarious tongue-twisting, which sometimes approaches the pace and cadence of rap and other times lands closer to a willfully overblown crooner. The tunes of Tippy never quite break into complete structural abandon, or devolve into genre-mashing chaos. At all times, you get the sense that Bible is writing a song song, so to speak, and whatever little distinctive details emerge within that framework are just icing on the weird pop-shaped cake.
The last time I saw Tippy perform (in the basement of a DIY-show house, of course), he approached the set like he was a jaded lounge singer showing off his wares to the people in attendance, standing a couple feet away from his battery of samplers and machines and wailing into the microphone from behind sunglasses in near complete darkness. With the adept hands-on-gear precision of a live beat-music performer, he pounded out synth lines and drum loops on his samplers in real time. The composite effect was one of studied pop songcraft meeting an almost Neil Hamburger-esque exaggerated performer persona – a frontman who is his own band, quipping with the crowd and keeping the weird commentary flowing when he wasn’t focusing on the machines.
To You At All, Bible’s newest album as Tippy, landed in early 2019. The tape highlights his verbose, dynamic singing style and his omnivorous production, which benefits from the higher-fidelity presentation of these final studio takes. Tracks such as “Bob Barker,” a trip through a narrator’s realization that the host of The Price Is Right isn’t dead as he thought, flow through a program of languid synth melodies and trap-adjacent drum programming. Bible’s voice swells in lovely choral arrangements and dips down into quieter moments in which he observes, for example, “That was the first time I was iPhone fact checked / I had a Razr and I couldn't understand why I would need more than that.” The lyrics for all of his tracks are included on the albums' Bandcamp page, and they’re worth checking out just to sink into the absurdity of his writing. What Tippy lacks in coherence (who needs coherence?) he makes up for in pure earnestness and humor.
Tippy plays has Rock Island concert on December 13 with additional sets by Mr. Jackson and Aqualife, admission to the 9 p.m. show is a $5-10 sliding scale, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 or visiting RozzTox.com.
