Let's have a change of pace: happy thoughts! We gotta stay positive...
Frightened Rabbit January 18, 2009 Great Scott, Allston, MA
After three songs of solid singing and whoo-ing along to Frightened Rabbit, lead singer Scott Hutchison looked at the mic and said "tonight's gonna be a good one." He was right.
They apparently didn't see many packed houses on this tour; in fact, their heavily front-loaded set list seemed to expect an audience to become distracted if they didn't keep them hooked from the get-go. That wasn't the case last month at the sold-out Great Scott.
And it's not going to be the case again if they keep this up. Seeing these guys up close and personal, on a stage that had no private entry or protection, was a treat unlikely to be repeated. If they continue to pop up on network pap like Chuck and Grey's Anatomy, it'll take a lot more work to see them from the front row again.
Given the crowd, and their popularity even as a fledgling outfit, that train might have already sailed. Hundreds of true believers braved a crippling winter storm to show up and rock out. The crowd was a lot more die-hard than I expected; their energy and sing-along skills drove the performance to surprising heights. It's hard to have much of a stage presentation in such a tiny setting, but they managed to show serious presence anyway. By covering each of The Midnight Organ Fight's eleven proper songs, and clearly, clearly busting their asses in the process, I don't think they would have let anyone leave disappointed. They really gave it their all.
While their music is nothing particularly special in structure, the amount of heart that Hutchison (and his brother, Grant, on the drum kit) pours into the music makes it special. In my Best Of 2008 post, I drew a comparison between them and Neutral Milk Hotel based on those very qualities. So it was no surprise when Frightened Rabbit busted out a cover of "Song Against Sex," from On Avery Island, during their encore. The only less surprising covers would have been "The King Of Carrot Flowers" and "Holland, 1945." Anyway, as a big NMH fan I was glad to see someone playing their music. (I've got a post on NMH in my draft folder; sit tight.)
Anyway, I left the show completely satisfied. Thanks to the storm, it took me two hours to traverse what is normally a 30-minute trip. Exhausted as I was, it was worth it.
Set List
The Modern Leper Fast Blood Old Old Fashioned I Feel Better Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms The Twist Backwards Walk Head Rolls Off Floating In The Forth The Greys Square 9
Poke (acoustic) Song Against Sex (NMH cover) Keep Yourself Warm
Opening Acts
Not much to report. Pants Yell! was okay, not too shabby for a local band. David Karsten Daniels, on the other hand, seemed preoccupied with his elaborate foot-switch setup when he should have been connecting with the crowd. When the material doesn't line up with the crowd or the other two acts, but you still need to keep someone else's crowd amused, you really can't be taking minutes between songs to draw attention to your bells and whistles like that. He lost me after two songs.
Why do things right away when you could just wait a month or two?
TV On The Radio / The Dirtbombs Wilbur Theater, October 13, 2008
Telling you that TVOTR is incredible in person is old news, so let's start with some exciting new business:
THE DIRTBOMBS
Absolutely outstanding. I listened to Ultraglide in Black, their 2001 soul cover album, damn near on repeat for the week leading up to this show... their new album, We Have You Surrounded, is good, but Ultraglide is the best thing I've heard all year. With the really great stuff, you know as soon as you hear a little bit of it, and Ultraglide is no exception.
Both Sly Stone cover "Underdog" or Phil Lynott cover, "Ode To A Black Man" deserve to be heard in all their proper glory. And you deserve to listen to them. Just barely below those two is "Chains of Love," embedded for your convenience, which also owns.
Unfortunately I had to wait for someone before the show, so I didn't make it inside in time to catch them playing either song. (At the pace those guys move along at, I probably missed about 5-6 songs in those 15 minutes.) But I did catch "Ever Lovin' Man" (embedded below) and "Chains of Love," so it worked out. My ears took a lot of punishment from being so close to the front, but entirely worth the trouble.
They have earned my business for each of their Boston shows for the immediate future. And if they come to you, you really need to check them out yourself.
Having seen them before (this is now my third time) and having gotten three completely different shows from them, each time elevating the source material, I'm pretty convinced. Easily one of the two or three best live acts I've ever seen. And any visit they make is going to get high marks from me.
I'm always impressed by how they go about repurposing their older songs, perfecting them over time for live performance. Case in point is "The Wrong Way," which has been making a slow journey from the medium-pace distort-o-matic recorded version to a show highlight that I dare say has overtaken "Wolf Like Me" in the rock-out department. (This will be the second year in a row that a TVOTR song will be my live-and-in-person highlight of the year.)
The version captured above was taken in Philly the night before the Boston show, and is notably missing the full horn section that makes the rendition I heard the full-blown Vegas-style explosion that it is. Tunde Adebimpe fed off the horns, hopping around even more than usual and knocking it out of the zip code, let alone the park. The closest comparison I could come up with, to what I saw and felt and was reminded of, was the James Brown church sequence in The Blues Brothers. It built and built and built. I kinda loved it.
Link:
The thing is, I was hoping for similarly joyous treatments of the new material. And I didn't get them. The new stuff played fine. The Benedictine Horns sounded a little off on "Golden Age" and "Crying" (though "Dancing Choose" went far better for them), and the result was less than perfect, given how awesome "Golden Age" in particular is.
The bottom line is that of the opening five-song murderer's row, the unquestionable highlights of that stretch were still oldies "The Wrong Way" and "Wolf Like Me." The new songs couldn't hold a candle to the old ones. I'm sure they will work that out; their second tour supporting Cookie Mountain was far better than the first.
Also on the less-than-glowing side, their set list surprised me a little. While I appreciate their range of abilities as a band, and I'm impressed that they thought to play two selections from Young Liars, I was put off by the long, filler-filled lull during the third quarter of the show. I didn't show up to hear "Stork and Owl," "Blues From Down Here," and similarly middling songs. Oddly, "Stork And Owl" is probably the ONLY song on Dear Science worth skipping, and they managed to include it at the expense of "Red Dress," understandably, and "DLZ" and "Lover's Day," less understandably. Leaving a full four new songs out in order to bring along "A Method?" Seriously? At least play "Tonight" or "Province," two other heinous omissions, if you're gonna preserve Cookie Mountain's lesser works. "Tonight" had never made much of an impression on me, until they opened their 4/19/07 show with it. It's surprisingly moving in person. "A Method" just sucks. What the hell.
But that doesn't change my opinion of their quality one bit. Despite the time I've spent nitpicking here, they are minor complaints on the whole. The great largely outweighs the not. The lulls and less-interesting song selections were flanked by some seriously excellent work. They are a truly tremendous live band.
As I've parroted before, the essence of this band has not been captured in the studio. One day, they will release a live album that presents their live sound definitively to the masses, as Okonokos did for My Morning Jacket, and people will flip the fuck out. (And "The Wrong Way" will be that album's best track by far.) I would like more people to have the experience I've had with these guys.
Other thoughts from the show:
* I liked the Wilbur Theater's concert setup. It's a skinny, tall theater, so floor access is that much better if you get it. And it's historic, so it's got some character, though not really that of a rock show. But best of all, unlike some theater-based rock shows, where you have to deal with immovable seating and strict ticketing restrictions, the Wilbur gets that shit out of the way! And with (I presume) fire codes involved, it's less of a sea of humanity down there at the bottom. The only minus is the lack of bar. But that can also be a plus, depending on the crowd. (Kyp actually thanked us for having so much fun despite the lack of bar.) On the whole, I give the Wilbur an A-.
* I was close enough to the stage to read Tunde's set list (in reverse) prior to the start of the show. While the blogger in me furiously noted the list in his phone, the fan in me knew what was coming ahead of time, and had a bit of the joy of surprise taken away. This is a good example of the reviewer/blogger mindset taking the soul out of the experience.
AVC: Cookie Mountain felt like an artistic hurricane. By contrast, Dear Science feels, not reserved, but...
TA: More regular?
AVC: Exactly.
TA: [Laughs.] The recording of Cookie Mountain is something that none of us really wanted to experience over again, let alone accidentally repeat. Doing so probably would have resulted in the band breaking up, or one of us causing another grievous bodily harm.
AVC: Why is that?
TA: It was just a really dark place. I'm glad that record exists, but it was kind of like the Ren & Stimpy episode where they get space madness, and they're orbiting the planet, ready to kill each other for a bar of soap. Coming home after touring, we had to be like, "Guys, remember how we actually liked each other? Let's do that again, and make something that comes out of that." Which is what Dear Science is.
Ren and Stimpy!!! The guy who sang "all your dreams are over now / all your wings have fallen down," draws analogies to Ren and Stimpy. This is like learning that Cormac McCarthy drawing inspiration from The Three Stooges.
Anyway, great show as always. I don't know that I really described the character of the show,
SET LIST Halfway Home The Wrong Way Dancing Choose Golden Age Wolf Like Me Young Liars Love Dog Stork and Owl Dreams Blues From Down Here Shout Me Out Satellite
DC legends Dismemberment Plan are reuniting for one night only next month for a benefit concert. All proceeds go to the cause. It sold out in seconds. Great, right? Sure, but only in a "I gave ten cents to a homeless guy, don't blame me" kind of way.
Yes, I am about to attack the band and the venue for putting on a benefit show. Because that's how completely and thoroughly they have fucked this process up.
The bottom line is that their well-intended benefit has left tens of thousands of dollars on the table, for no conceivable good reason. $15 is just way, way too low a price for that show. Astronomically low. If the band holds any consumer-friendly sentiments about pricing tickets, I should damn well hope they are secondary to the cause at hand. I mean, they didn't think nobody would want to see them, did they? Earth to D-Plan: it's only Travistan that sucked! The rest was pretty goddamn popular.
First, you have to think that a single-night reunion of a band of their stature, in a venue of that size, has to be priced as a luxury as compared to a normal show. In their heyday, they'd probably be a $15-20 ticket, so let's bump that up to $30. Big ticket, but still not out of whack under the above conditions.
Now consider that it's a charity show, and you can hit up buyers for another $10-15. Hell, I don't even like them all that much, and I would gladly have paid $40 to see this show. What would someone who actually enjoys their music pay?!?
Finally, a smart person would have noted that hipsters from every city or college campus within 500 miles was a potential customer; as such, the price could be elevated yet again. I'd think $50 would be the bare minimum for a ticket to that thing. Not $15.
And yet $15 it was. No econ majors at the Black Cat, apparently.
Why is that such a Travisty? Because fans from here on out will be paying $50 prices anyway, thanks to the scalper fucks who bought 50 tickets a pop on Ticketmaster. That's right... they weren't keeping people from buying tickets to a tiny venue in 50-ticket quantities. Who are the ad wizards who thought that was a good idea?!? However much money the band and venue raised for SMA, they easily left twice that amount on the table. Fans are still paying ridiculous prices, and that cash will go straight to scalpers. Bra-fucking-vo.
It just kills me when stupidity causes harm to something genuinely good. I mean, great idea and all, and it's not like you're doing nothing, but this is a capital-m Mess.
Death Cab For Cutie with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists 11/7/06 @ D.A.R. Constitution Hall
In Five Words Hey, I remember these guys!
In More Words Death Cab was a lot better than I expected. I've made no secret of my complaints about Plans on this here Interblog, but I kinda figured those songs would have more life in person. Indeed, they did.
It was an extremely consistent show. The songs themselves were played straight, with one exception (more on that later), so there's not a lot of "ooh, remember when they played X"-type moments to point to in retrospect. But the flip side of that coin is that there were no lowlights either. They have so much quality material in the arsenal that there's no shortage of excellent music for them to plow through. Judging by the set list for the 11/6 show, I tend to think that first show got more of the "interesting" pieces (like opening with "405"... ballsy, given the MTVU crowd). But I like ours... they did play personal favorite "I Was A Kaleidoscope," so I'm glad this was the show I got to see.
The crescendo was the main-set-closing one-two punch of "We Looked Like Giants" and "Transatlanticism." Closing the encore with "The Sound of Settling" seemed like an afterthought by comparison... it's their best song, but it's so short! And it really paled in comparison to "Giants" in particular, which contained what is apparently DCFC's lone stage trick: extending the closing riff with a Jason McGerr vs. Ben Gibbard drum duel on separate kits. It was like Horse... Gibbard would play something and McGerr immediately outdid it and then some. And it wasn't like "everyone stop what you're doing, cause I'm doing a drum solo," which literally any drummer can do. The song groove kept going, and the drum soloing had to hold the riff together. It was just straight-up skills from a highly-skilled band. Very impressive.
Ted Leo's set was just as excellent. That they were an afterthought on the evening is awfully unfair, but I really enjoyed hearing them live. Makes me want to see more of them when their new album drops next year.
But as great as the music was, this show was defined by the externalities that arise when you put a rock show in Constitution Hall.
1) First off, Con Hall is an execrable venue for this kind of show. Sure, it's nice to have space to yourself (as my Decemberists post indicates) but it just sucks the life out of everything. You're stuck in a wooden auditorium chair, in a cavernous, lifeless, pristine, venerable venue. Nobody's at ease, due in no small part to the ushers Gestapo manning the aisles, checking tickets. What fun is that?!? What is this, a fucking school assembly? It's hard enough for acts in Venue Purgatory to connect with audiences in a place like Con Hall even when you aren't holding guns to everyone's heads.
2) The spaciousness and emptiness of Con Hall resulted in a criminally poor reception for incomparable ass-kicker Ted Leo. The place was goddamn empty. Come on, people. Ted Leo is a big deal. Show some respect.
3) The crowd, on the whole, sucked. The venue gets the lion's share of the blame, but a quality crowd could have overcome that. Seriously, everyone in the balconies was just sitting there like they wanted to puke. What'd you buy the ticket for if you're just gonna sit there like a dead fish all night? Too cool to rock out? Don't even get me started on the skew towards new material like "Crooked Teeth" that doesn't hold a candle to anything on The Photo Album. They couldn't ALL have been there to have their tears jerked by "I Will Follow You Into The Dark." I imagine that if I said, "We have the facts... aaaaaaand?" to 99% of the audience, they would be incapable of finishing the thought. (On election night, no less!) Anyway, I guess it's more evidence that sharing is bad.
But having said all that, I still have an exceedingly positive take on the show.
1) Just to reiterate, Ted Leo is awesome. Even from a distance, with naught but empty seats surrounding him, he really rocked out. I'd love to see him headline a show sometime... preferably after I've had a chance to become better-acquainted with Hearts of Oak and The Tyranny of Distance.
2) I forgot how great Death Cab is. It's been a while since Plans came out, and they've been out-of-sight/out-of-mind ever since. This show reminded me that DCFC, in their heart of hearts, is the same awesome band that made Transatlanticism, and not the merely-good incarnation that made Plans. I recall watching their concert DVD, Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, and thinking the band in the concert video wouldn't exist going forward. Entirely untrue. The set list shows an awful lot of older tunes... it's not as if they were catering to the new fans. They rock in spite of their new audience, and it's the new fans' job to come around, not vice versa. That's the right approach, and I'm glad they went that way. In short, rumors of the band's demise have been greatly exaggerated.
3) They played a long set, plus three songs in the encore. Definitely got my money's worth out of them.
You can read DCist for more substance about the show itself. But it should suffice to say that they exceeded my expectations, and alleviated most of my concerns. I still hope for a return to Transatlanticism-style rock for their next album, but even if not, at least I know I've seen them at the top of their game.
Set List Marching Bands of Manhattan The New Year We Laugh Indoors Why’d You want to Live Here Crooked Teeth Title and Registration Lightness Photobooth Movie Script Ending Company Calls Company Calls Epilogue I Will Follow You into the Dark Soul Meets Body I Was a Kaleidoscope We Looked Like Giants Transatlanticism
[encore] Your Heart is An Empty Room I'm Going Home (Sonics cover) The Sound of Settling
In More Words I liked it. I haven't got much to say beyond that. I like the band, and I liked the show. Nothing mind-blowing, but definitely recommended. They're a solid band, and they're on their way up.
I have to admit that the most memorable part of the evening, for me, was the band's Halloween costumes. Not that the get-ups were so great, but it added something to have Gordon perform all night as Tyrone Biggums. (He made it almost all the way through the show without coming out of character during his stage banter. So close...)
DIY was certainly the name of the game. TNT didn't even have a roadie. They hauled all their own shit, and didn't even have a proper "headliner" entrance... they just kinda went "OK, we're ready" and started playing. I dig that it's kinda endearing that they're not getting too puffed-up in the head about themselves until they have some real success and all, but it kinda took away from the drama of the moment. They're a band of note. The Cat was packed full of people waiting for them. I expected at least a little fanfare.
But that has nothing to do with the tunes. They were good. They were not revelatory, but they followed through on their promise. I had a good time. And I got to stand under the air conditioner (ahhhhhhhhh).
In Ten Words Of Four Letters Or Fewer It is the best show I have ever been to.
In A Great Many Words It's official. Between my review of The Crane Wife, and my thoughts concerning this concert, I am no longer capable of discussing The Decemberists objectively. They inspire a serious and cult-like love amongst their fans, and I've chugged enough Kool-Aid to hydrate me into 2008. You have my permission to start taking grains of salt now.
But don't take too many. The passion I feel about this show in particular is legitimate. Sure, it's easy to just yell and scream "best sh0w evarrrr" or whatever in the immediate wake of a concert. You're running on adrenaline, it's immediate in your thoughts, and so forth. Knowing this, I gave it a couple weeks to marinate in my mind before posting. I've even been to a couple shows since, just to add some controls into the equation. I write this all in cold blood.
It's still the best show I've ever been to.
For a band to be so beloved (by me) going into a concert, and still come out exceeding my high expectations, is a real achievement. It was a perfect concert. Totally perfect.
What's funny is that you would never expect The Decemberists to be a "bring the house down" kind of band. The words used to describe their recorded work are along the lines of "quaint," "precious," "chamber pop," "literary," "anachronistic" and such. Not "knock your socks off your ass." And yet that's exactly what they did. I got rocked. Every song was slammed out of the park, hard as could be, every ounce of juice squeezed out as the song sailed over the fence. I can't help but feel that I saw the band at the peak of its powers.
As they did on The Crane Wife, the band proves itself to be an agile, highly-skilled unit. The songs were impressively faithful to their recorded versions, despite a wealth of strange instrumentation (bouzouki, hurdy-gurdy, others). And they had energy to burn. Much of the credit for that belongs to drummer John Moen. I never paid much mind to his drumming on the albums, but in person he really got my attention. He commanded the band, driving and fueling its grooves, as any great drummer should. I'm glad I finally noticed his work, because it deserves praise.
Perhaps unsurprising was the quality of the band's stage presence. Beyond simply appearing to have a good time, which goes a long way, they executed a number of crowd-pleasing, spontaneous-seeming "bits." Band members went into the audience and acted out scenes of Colin's choosing. Colin grabbed cameras and cell phones from the audience, futzing around with them during extended grooves. Nothing revolutionary, nor even particularly original in retrospect, but definitely fun. After all, even contrived theatrics can be made to feel genuine and special. The bottom line is that crowds love Colin Meloy, Rock Star, and he convinced us that everyone on stage was having as much fun as we were in the pit.
As if tunes and tomfoolery wouldn't have been enough, I have to say it was also the most pleasant concert-going experience of my lifetime. Nobody forcing their way forward by shoving people out of their way... nobody puffing their smoke away from their own face and into mine... nobody dancing into me with their elbows... not so much as a whiff of douchebaggery all night long. Having your personal space respected in its entirety for nigh on four hours at a sold-out rock show is a once-in-a-lifetime event; as such, I am highly appreciative. I cite three main factors:
1) The ban on smoking, by band request (THANK YOU) 2) My ears weren't ringing, even a little bit, on my way home 3) The laid-back, respectful, and all-around considerate demeanor of the average Decemberists fan
So not only did I get to see one of my favorite bands, playing what will likely be their best music, but the 9:30 Club just so happened to be a jerk-free zone for the entire night. I couldn't have been any happier.
Other fun thoughts:
* When I went inside, around 8:00, the balcony was full and the floor was about half-full. And the area around the bar was totally unattended. It was bizarre. My first instinct was that they were prevented from selling beer on Sunday or something. I actually asked the bartender if he was serving beer or not. (That question got quite a look.) I guess none of the early arrivals wanted to lose their place in the crowd by having a drink, but I was able to leave and return to my spot without incident. Just weird.
* If you're familiar with Castaways and Cutouts, the band's first full-length, you know the miserable story of poor, unfortunate, prematurely dry-ravine-birthed Leslie Anne Levine. During the encore, Colin held up a baby doll with "Leslie Anne Levine" written on it, and tossed it into the crowd. (The guy right next to me caught it, and gave to his girlfriend. Can't argue with that.) But that's exactly the kind of humor you don't expect right away from a guy who makes his living telling gut-wrenching tragedies. And it's a cute way to nod to the older material without having to actually perform it.
SET LIST Crane Wife 3 The Island We Both Go Down Together The Engine Driver Yankee Bayonet Perfect Crime #2 Shankill Butchers Song for Myla Goldberg O, Valencia! July, July! 16 Military Wives Crane Wife 1 & 2 Sons and Daughters
[encore] Culling of the Fold Legionnaire’s Lament A Cautionary Song
In Two Words, Or Three, Depending On Your Interpretation Of Hyphens Shit-eating grin.
Just Review The Goddamn Concert Already I haven't got as much to say about this show as I did about the TVOTR show. With Art Brut, there was not an opening of eyes. It wasn't a "blown away" situation, because I was sold on Art Brut a long time ago. I've been listening to Bang Bang Rock And Roll for almost two years now, and it still makes me laugh. The live act is more of the same... which is a good thing. My face was locked in a grin for the vast majority of the show.
That reaction is due in large part to the unbounded charisma of Eddie Argos. He is flat-out hilarious. His personality just oozes through every bit of his performance. His dry, post-modern cheek is endlessly amusing, skillfully walking the line between camp and brilliance. There's something about his voice that's just inherently goofy and enjoyable.
Despite the light sense of humor, they're more than a novelty act. Musically speaking, they are simple, skilled, and accessible. They've been touring almost non-stop for two years, and it shows. Just a really tight unit that knows those songs forwards and backwards by now. I knew Eddie would be worth the ticket price, but the band was better than I expected.
Regardless, Art Brut live gets four and a half Rusted Guns of Milan out of five!
Two bands opened. I wrote about The Spinto Band, whom I like an awful lot, a couple weeks ago. They lived up to my heightened expectations... very fun band. Also opening was Tokyo Police Club, who were awfully good considering that they were the opener to an opener. TPC was okay, but I expected complete disaster. If their music catches up to their stage energy, they could be something.
In More Words Half the songs they performed made me incapable of saying anything other than one, or both, of those words.
Having seen them, my suspicions were correct: the live show totally did it for me. I now believe all the hype to be true; they showed me what all the howling's for. (And I finally got my cookies!)
But that doesn't mean I'll be withdrawing my criticism of their albums. Just the opposite, in fact: I think I'm more right about their album work now that I've seen them. It's not that they aren't good albums. It's that neither Return to Cookie Mountain nor Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes packs anything resembling the wallop to the chops I got on Sunday night. When the fuzz-noise guitar undercurrent of the album tracks is brought up front, it changes everything. I needed that in order to "get it."
It troubles me that it takes a live show to understand what the hell they're doing. It's one thing for the show to be better than the album, but for it to be a different beast entirely is a problem. What if you and a friend were having a discussion over the phone, and your friend was incapable of explaining his position without showing you in person? If your friend lives in Oregon and you're in DC, it's impractical. Likewise, there will come a time when having TV On The Radio explain their music to you in person will be impractical for everyone involved. The venues won't be as intimate as 9:30 forever.
I'm not sure I'll ever see a solution to my puzzle. The band's mission does not seem to involve rock-out albums, particularly when the albums are received as well as Cookie Mountain is. Then again, what the hell do I know? I'll probably come all the way around on them eventually, and this whole problem will disappear. (Maybe masking guitar reverb in the studio is a province of the brave?)
Anyway, I do feel like I understand them a lot better. Best show I've seen in quite a while. I'm sold.
The men's room at Union Station smells like vaginas. Yes, that's right... vaginas. I've used that restroom twice, and it's smelled like vaginas twice. A whole big bag of vaginas.
And I'm not talking about that classic, immediately-identifiable aroma, either. If it were just that, I'd have just said the place smells like vegetarian pad thai and left it at that. There's nothing about plain old vagina smell that a dedicated person can't overcome. But the odor in question is genuinely terrifying. I'm talking caveman vaginas. Vaginis neanderthalensis. I'm stunned that the tiles don't fall right off the wall. That shit violates the Geneva Convention... right under the nose of Congress, no less. (So to speak.)
I haven't been in recently or anything. I was just thinking about it today.
