A couple totally unconnected friends recommended seeing Tinariwen when they came through town a couple weeks ago. I didn’t really know anything about them, and it was quite expensive for a 9:30 Club show ($40!), but eventually persuaded myself to go check them out. Apparently they have a great back story, and I do have an interest in things like the status of Tuareg tribes, and they get good reviews, so it wasn’t that hard of a decision.
And I don’t regret it or anything — actually they were really good — but they won’t stick in my mind as a legendary performance. Honestly it was the kind of thing that could have benefited from some mind-altering substances, but I liked it even just with some beers.
I think what was most surprising about this show is how, well, non-exotic it seemed. I mean, it isn’t very close to Western pop, but it is deeply infused with modern western experimental music and psychedelic sounds that have been around for decades. (I guess you could say that western psych and experimental stuff was influenced by non-western mystics, but I wouldn’t want to take that argument very far.) Tinariwen wasn’t really that different from some of the music I already listen to. I guess it’s globalization: we are all influencing each other back and forth.
I dug the guitar tones, I liked the percussion. At times I was reminded of psychedelic bands like Spiritualized, at other times I was thinking of bands that delve into mythic terrain like Silver Mt. Zion or even Lungfish. I also found myself pondering the logistics of this band, and the point of having all those extra people on stage who contributed only a few background vocals. No wonder the tickets were expensive.
I think the problem with this slow, druggy music is that it leaves too much time to think. I watched Tinariwen and thought about colonization and globalization, about white guilt and the endless back-and-forth of cultural co-option. I guess in theory you are supposed to be contemplative and willing to be moved to a higher realm, but for me that usually only works with extreme noise or energy, not sparsely picked guitars. Maybe this kind of music is beautiful, but I prefer the sublime? This music is joyful, but I prefer the tragic? That’s my working theory. I appreciate the beautiful, but am really only truly moved by the sublime.
A few weeks back a friend and I decided at the last moment to go to the “M3″ Festival (what does it stand for? We didn’t know, or really care). I was sucked into it by the line-up of ’80s metal/hard rock bands that I loved in middle school years. Some of those bands I still love! Some, less so. It promised to be a good mix of both.
We didn’t rush — it was a hot summer afternoon, and beer was destined to be consumed, so it seemed prudent to take it easy. This meant that we missed a lot of the early bands, like Trixter and L.A. Guns. We were in the parking lot eating Subway sandwiches and drinking beers while Winger was tearing up the crowd. I can live with being that close to Winger and never catching a glimpse.
But I was pleased that we managed to catch Bang Tango on the second stage. They are one of those bands I never knew very well, but liked. My older brother was all into Bang Tango, and I can remember him driving around with their tapes blasting, circa 1990. They put on a good show.
Here they are playing “Ready to Go”:
But my favorite moment of the performance was spotting this chick with a Queensrÿche tattoo! How awesome is this??
My head was still reeling a little from the Queensrÿche tattoo when, after Bang Tango, we wandered to the mainstage to see Kix. After decades of never getting around to seeing Kix, the biggest semi-hometown band of my youth, this was my second time seeing them in the past year. Last time, I was full of complex, ambivalent feelings. This time I was more willing to just enjoy them for being a silly, great rock band. They are not a band that you should spend a whole lot of time projecting personal Angst upon.
They looked about the same as last time, Steve Whiteman ugly as sin, the band totally rocking the joint. Here you can check them out doing one of their best songs, “Cold Blood” (I was singing along):
Having enough of the Kix experience (they played a pretty long set), we left during the last song (the one I dislike, “Yeah Yeah Yeah”) to go back to the other stage and check out Dizzy Reed.
I have never listened to any of Dizzy’s solo stuff, but I have long admired the name of his solo band, Hookers N’ Blow. He put on a pretty great set, playing covers and who-knows-what-else; there were a couple of Guns N’ Roses songs thrown in. He actually sounds quite a bit like Axl Rose. This was a fun performance, and from the stage banter, it seemed like the band was just sort of thrown together. I would go see Dizzy at a club sometime. I kinda want to go to L.A. and hang out with him.
Dizzy Reed – “Cheers to Oblivion” :
After Dizzy’s set, we moved to the mainstage and abandoned the back-and-forth action (meaning we missed Warrant). Up next was Vince Neil, who put on one of the more baffling performances I’ve ever seen. I really like Mötley Crüe, or anyway I like the idea of Mötley Crüe. They seemed to occupy a sweet spot in the ’80s hard rock hierarchy — heavy enough to seem semi-tough, but with plenty of chick appeal via all the ballads. But then sometimes I wonder if they aren’t just another party rock band like Poison. So much philosophical debate!
Anyway I was sort of interested to see what Vince Neil would do, I was assuming it would be a Crüe greatest hits sort of show. And it seemed that way at first. His band was awesome, but Vince Neil himself was awful. He ran around, sang intermittently, and then — weirdest of all — wandered off-stage for like 10 or 15 minutes at one point. The band seemed to be covering up, playing a Zeppelin medley where the guitarist proved to be a better singer than Neil himself. I was sort of thinking — hoping? — that Vince Neil had disappeared, perhaps in a helicopter heading home sweet home. But he eventually wandered back onto the stage, sang some Zeppelin himself, and finished the show. How odd! It was like a week afterwards that he made the news for getting arrested for drunk driving.
Anyway here is Vince doing a Crüe hit:
After Vince Neil’s set, while we sat and skipped the Warrant performance in the background, was one of the weirder moments of the night. As background music over the speakers, somebody put on the first Burning Airlines record, and played almost the whole thing. Amusing! I wonder what sort of statement that staffperson was making. Maybe it was “these bands rock, and so does J. Robbins!” I would like to hope so, anyway it was funny and incongruous and I enjoyed listening. Thanks, IMP Productions employee!
After Mission: Control! was turned off, we got to see the awesomest performance of the night: Cinderella!
I’ve always liked Cinderella, and one of the first few CDs I ever bought was by them. I haven’t listened to them in ages and ages, though, and I have learned an awful lot more about music in the intervening couple of decades. So it was fun to listen to them, and relive my adolescence a bit, and figure out what I think of this band nowadays.
Obviously, they are a bit past their prime, but they really sounded pretty good and energetic. They started off sounding pretty metal — in the vein of Judas Priest almost. But gradually they eased into just plain ole’ rock and roll, the same kind played by a lot of great bands through the years, from the Black Crowes to the Rolling Stones. This is a great style — hard rock, slightly metal-inflected, mixed with Stones-y swagger. Guns N’ Roses did something similar from time to time, but I kind of think Cinderella have a more interesting take on it. Really good stuff. Also Tom Keifer turned out to be a good musician rather than just a frontman, it helped put Vince Neil’s earlier performance to shame, playing guitar and piano and saxophone (!).
Here’s “Nobody’s Fool” which is of course a great song, though maybe not typical:
Cinderella was a hard act to follow and I am not sure the Scorpions were up to the challenge. I really like the Scorpions but they came on late (there were all kinds of technical problems in getting them onstage) and the crowd was getting restless. Klaus Meine was sick (though you couldn’t really tell from his voice). Many folks had been out in the hot sun for like 10 hours, and were itching to go beat traffic.
Even I was feeling a little worn out, though I totally wanted to be attentive. This was supposedly a farewell tour for the ancient Germans.
Probably the coolest thing about the Scorpions’ performance was their sheer attitude. These guys aren’t screwin’ around, they are acting like a right proper metal band. A Teutonic metal band! They had a ridiculous pneumatic drum riser thing straight out of a Spinal Tap performance, they all wore black leather. Super sweet. At a certain point, Vince Neil came out to join them for a song (why??) and the contrast was ridiculous, with Vince basically looking like a slovenly Jimmy Buffett in comparison.
The performance was pretty good, and fun. Great rock band. But I think they might have been better served headlining a more reasonable show, not a ridiculous all-day festival. If it had just been Scorps and Cinderella it would’ve totally roooled.
Here they are doing one of my old favorites, “Holiday.” Funny, with the Scorpions I almost like their ballads better than their rockers (not “Wind of Change” though).
Last week I was pretty excited to go see Medications at the Black Cat. I have their new album and have been grappling with it for a few weeks. I am not sure yet how I feel about it — it is a strange album — and I was hoping the live show would provide a little clarity.
I’ve seen Medications lots of times (and Faraquet lots of times before that), though the current version of the band is obviously significantly different from what came before. The last time I saw them was maybe a year and a half ago to two years ago, after Andrew Becker had left the band. Devin and Chad played a show at DC9 with someone else (maybe Mark Cisneros?) as a keyboard/utility man. I happened to end up chatting to Devin after that performance, and he said they were still working out how to continue as a band, and were doing a lot of recording. So basically that was a work-in-progress version of what is now the new Medications, including more singing by Chad, more keyboards, and an overall more-stripped-down sound.
At the totally-packed backstage of the Black Cat last week, they rolled out a quartet version of the band, and sounded pretty great. I think I am going to like this incarnation (if they stay very active… they are getting older, and busy in life). It took me a long time to start really loving Medications after I was such a huge Faraquet fan, and I think it will take me some more time to adjust to Medications version 2.0. But it was great.
The new Medications stuff is much poppier than their older music, with lots of nice duets and harmonies between Chad and Devin. I really like the singing in Medications songs, and now they are getting so melodic that you lose track of the impressive music. And without the powerhouse drumming that they used to have, they don’t seem nearly as challenging or hard-rock/math-rock. That’s cool though — I think they accomplished all that they needed to in that direction.
Devin’s guitar was often backed up with rhythm guitar from the other guitarist which left him free to play minimalistically, throwing in leads that sometimes sounded like Nels Cline. They played a couple of old Medications for good measure, including the encore (though I can never remember the names of their songs), so they haven’t entirely abandoned the old stuff. I am pretty happy with the whole thing, and was glad I made it, and even a little inspired by it.
I only caught about half of Imperial China‘s set. I like this band (and wish them only success) but got a little fatigued by them after promoting them to friends and listening to their new album so much when it came out a few months ago. At the backstage, they sounded awesome musically — it’s a good venue for them and it was fun to see them in front of a packed and attentive crowd. Again, I have a few caveats about this band (i.e., the singing). It is interesting to contrast to Medications, where the singing is not traditionally strong either, but somehow works a little better. Anyhow Imperial China seem to be experiencing some success and hopefully they can keep it up. But Medications is still a couple steps above them in the quality hierarchy.
PS there was a very interesting piece in the City Paper recently about DC bands booking shows and tours, relating to both of these bands. Check it out.
How old are the dudes in Converge? It seems like this band has been around for freakin’ ever. I have known their music a little bit for a long time, but I’m not super familiar with them and had never seen them before, so I was up for going with an old-Converge-fan friend. Neither of us knew much about their newer music but it wasn’t like it was gonna be startling.
Anyway Converge was fun. The show was actually pretty early, and Converge was opening for Thursday, so by the time we got there Converge had already started (and we missed the other opening acts). I was never really that big a fan of hardcore, and I haven’t spent that much time at hardcore shows, but I do like it and it was fun to watch these old dudes (the internet says they’ve been around since 1990!) rock out. Converge makes music that is more interesting than just hardcore, or “metalcore.” They are great at putting a few melodic and anthemic elements into noisy heavy songs:
After Converge came Thursday, a band I have heard of forever but knew little about. They were kind of mainstream popular about 5 years ago, and were hopping onto Converge’s tour while working on recording a new album. They seemed like nice guys (and they were dealing with some kind of crew medical emergency) but not too many people in the audience cared about them. Their music struck me as “hardcore for girls” which I don’t really mean in a sexist sense. I mean, I know lots of girls that are way more into hardcore than I am. I mean that Thursday is kind of what you would expect, an cleaned-up MTV version of hardcore punk. They were ok at what they did, though.
Thursday is from Jersey and I was watching them and remembering another long-ago Jersey hardcore-ish band, the Trans-Megetti. Whatever happened to them? The singer in Thursday reminded me a bit of the singer in Trans-Megetti and I wondered if they might perchance be the same person? I guess not, but those kinds of wandering thoughts kind of show how into Thursday I was. We left before the end of the show but not before giving them a chance. They weren’t terrible.
A whole month has somehow slipped by since I went to the Black Cat to see Quasi. A friend from my old band is a big fan of them and had an extra ticket, and I was up for it. I actually saw Quasi many years ago, probably as an opening act? Maybe a decade ago. But I have never really listened to them much.
It was not terribly crowded at the main stage of the Black Cat, but the joint was full of old scenesters and I had a sudden shock of nostalgia the first time Janet Weiss walked by — it made me dreadfully miss Sleater-Kinney. But Quasi doesn’t have too much in common with S-K, except to the extent that their music has evolved in a somewhat similar direction to the path S-K took towards the end of their run — guitartastic classic rock. Just like Carrie Brownstein, Sam Coomes seems to have been working on his Jimmy Page routine pretty hard.
The performance at the Black Cat was (apparently) based mostly on their new album and Coomes mostly played guitar, and they played as a trio with a bassist who is evidently part of the band these days. A few times he switched over to keyboard and it sounded a little more like the old Quasi I was mildly familiar with. They sounded pretty good though! Real rock and roll stuff. More than anything I was reminded of Crazy Horse and Danny Whitten. I kept expecting them to break into “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown.” (See this song as an example. There is also (as I remember from older Quasi material) a lot of Beatles via Elliott Smith influence.
Fun show. They ended by noting that they have been playing a lot of Who covers and playing a pretty rockin’ version of “Pictures of Lily.” Actually it was a lot more rockin’ than the original Who version. Cheers, Quasi.
Openers Let’s Wrestle were kind of inoffensively ok. I remember finding them enjoyable but they weren’t really doing anything at all original. I liked the bass. It’s cool, I like seeing bands that are competent and unheralded. Not crazy about their name, though.
There is this band called The Points that has been kicking around DC for a while and I have been vaguely aware of them. They were the house band at Fight Club and they play at other places, and they have a whiff of controversy about them… getting banned from clubs, maybe? I am not sure.
Anyway I didn’t think I had ever seen them forgot that I had seen them before and so I was willing to go along with some friends that wanted to check them out. And I was amused, though not overwhelmed. They were a straightforward punk/hardcore band straight outta 1982, sounding almost exactly like the Misfits. Here and there I was wondering if they were actually just covering Misfits songs that I don’t know. They had a bunch of fans who spat beer at them enough to drench the singer/guitarist in a sort of gross way. It was fun. But sort of dated. As in, they were doing things that were only novel for a few seconds, over 25 years ago.
I would be willing to watch The Points again but I wouldn’t really go out of my way. Maybe if I were 17 I would be a little more interested. They were fun but inessential.
On the other hand I would really like to hear more from openers Davey Crockett. This was a guitar/drums duo that played really loud and hard pop… actually not so incredibly different from Japandroids who I saw like a month ago, only not quite as poppy as that. But there was a similarity in the way the guitar wasn’t complicated, just basic rhythm guitar played loud and hard with lots of effects, on some sort of hollow-body telecaster. I thought they were great. The guitarist was a nerdy type who reminded me a little of Lou Barlow, while the drummer’s long black hair hanging down in his face reminded me of Dave Grohl. They were selling tapes and I would’ve bought one if I’d had any cash, but I guess it was not meant to be.
Davey Crockett are from Houston and seem to be a pretty new band. Here is their myspace where I can get my fill of what was probably on that tape. I’m glad I caught them.
There was an earlier band that I missed; a review over at DC Rock Live suggests they would’ve been worth it, too.
UPDATE: Actually if I would read my own blog I would realize that I had seen The Points at least once before, a year ago opening for Obits at the Black Cat. Huh. Well I have no real recollection of that — obviously nobody was spitting beer at them then. Who knows how many bands I have seen and forgotten…
There was a pretty great line-up a couple weeks back on a Thursday the 9th at the 930 — Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Obits, and Screaming Females. I knew the Screaming Females only by reputation. I’d already seen Obits twice in the past year. And I have seen Ted Leo like a million times. So in a way I really wanted to see them in inverse order, but I had some social obligations and ended up missing Screaming Females, unfortunately.
But I wasn’t about to miss Obits. What a kick-ass rock band! It was weird to see them on the huge 930 stage playing in front of a mostly oblivious crowd. On paper (or screen) it seems like Obits would be a great band to open for Ted Leo — both bands play melodic, smart, punky tunes, and in fact while I was watching Obits I was thinking that Ted Leo could easily cover these songs. But something seemed to keep the crowd from fully embracing Obits (and vice versa). I got the impression that the Ted Leo fans liked it, but were also antsy for the main act. This is the fate of every opening act at a place as big as the 930.
Of course I was already a huge fan, and I managed to watch them from almost right in front of the stage while I waited for other friends to show up at the club. They played a couple of new songs that I didn’t recognize, and for the first time they didn’t play “Back and Forth” which is their cheesy/dumb/awesome pop song, but they just slayed on “Milk Cow Blues.” There was a problem with the sound, though, and I thought that the guitars were out of balance — Rick Froberg’s was too loud and Sohrab Habibion’s was too quiet.
I actually chatted to Froberg after the show for a few minutes, he was hanging around outside the 930 Club and I just wanted to tell him how rad it was. He mentioned that he wasn’t super thrilled about playing a “concert” rather than a “show.” Other nights on their tour were “shows” but the show at the 930 was more of a “concert.” I knew what he meant. I agreed. Obits are not a “concert” kind of band but they seem to be better each time I see them. I reckon at least a handful of the Ted Leo fans were won over.
Anyway, speaking of Ted Leo fans…
Well, really what is there to say? I don’t want to be an elitist ass always mumbling to the side, all, “I remember when Ted Leo lived here and was playing solo shows every other day, where did all these annoying young internet-based fans come from, blah blah blah.” But I will just mention how odd it is that Ted Leo is pretty much the only musician who crossed over into the post-millennial indie scene successfully from a certain time and era of indie/hardcore/post-hardcore DC/east coast music. Phew — what a mouthful. It makes sense to me. I mean he is basically the only semi-popular musician with roots in hardcore, I guess. Also he has James Canty back in the Pharmacist fold, which is almost like Johnny Marr joining Modest Mouse, or Nels Cline joining Wilco. Though I miss French Toast.
Anyway my point is just that I have weird conflicted feelings about latter-era Ted Leo stuff but I still love his music, admire him greatly as an individual, and keep listening to material from throughout his career. But I listened a fair number of times to the new TL/Rx album, The Brutalist Bricks and it hasn’t done a whole lot for me. It seems more punk-rock than some of his other albums, and seems impassioned, but little of it really grips me except maybe for “Bottled in Cork” which is the latest in a long series of Ted Leo songs about traveling in the world.
Anyhow the show was fun, drawing heavily on the new album and touching on pretty much all the other Ted Leo albums. They didn’t play too much of the good stuff from the mid-era albums but they did a ton of old songs from Tyranny of Distance which was enjoyable. For an encore Ted did a solo cover of the Waterboys and at the very end, as things seemed about to wrap up, I was thinking to myself “it would be cool with all these old songs if they would end on ‘Stove by a Whale’” and that is exactly what they did! Cool — certainly took me back.
I can’t find much in the way of vids or photos from the show but it’s not like the internet needs much more Ted Leo stuff anyway. But here is a photo snagged from essgee on flickr:
I heard about Serena-Maneesh years ago, and downloaded a few songs. “Drain Cosmetics” ended up on one of my virtual mix tapes from 2006 or so. But I never really pursued my mild interest in these Norwegians. I think I got them mixed up with Autolux or possibly one of the other 10 billion bands that were doing neo-shoegaze towards the end of the past decade. It’s a great sound, but basically interchangeable. Even 15 to 20 years ago these bands were mostly interchangeable. There was a livejournal blog several years ago that was posting shoegaze albums for download and I got real excited about it for a couple days then realized that after you have listened to MBV and Slowdive there isn’t really much need to delve into the Penelope Trips of the world.
Serena-Maneesh was more Penelope Trip than MBV. But that is ok too. I hadn’t seen any shoegaze type bands in a while.
I actually enjoyed their show quite a bit, not really knowing their stuff too well going in, not even certain how to pronounce their name. What struck me the most was how European they sounded — they wore their influences on the sleeves of their Euro-style outfits, and those influences were all northern European. And great influences, too, but this band seemed to deliberately eschew American rock and roll sounds, the singer’s Steven Tyler-esque veil notwithstanding.
Obviously they sounded occasionally almost exactly like MBV but they also had a fair amount of Britpop (as did MBV themselves) in there, and also had a serious krautrock thing going too — Kraftwerk background vocals over a strong motorik beat lifted directly from Neu!:
What they most reminded me of though was Primal Scream at their danciest, freaked-out-est — watching this band made me imagine what Primal Scream shows must have been like when Kevin Shields was playing guitar. And I would have loved to see those shows. I guess this was a fun substitute.
Here’s an alternate take and some photos from BYT.
Japandroids! This is a band that I begrudgingly adore! I heard about them from multiple people a while ago, and slowly started to listen to them, then bought their album. And with each listen I found myself grinning more often and enjoying myself more. Such fun! Such cheese! I sometimes pretend to be too old and embittered — and too into experimental, cerebral music — to love this goofy, joyful, noise/pop/emo duo, but I just can’t resist.
These are two young Vancouverites rocking out in the tradition of ’90s emo and ’00s noise pop, with their hearts apparently on their sleeves. They’re not embarrassed to sing terrible lyrics about French kissing French girls, and staying crazy forever. Their joie de vivre reminds me a little of early Minus the Bear — also fans of unabashed, enthusiastic songs about girls; their sincere awkward lyrics remind me of the Promise Ring who sang songs “from Bell South unto a southern belle.”
So yeah I kind of love these dudes. I was excited to go see them at the Rock and Roll Hotel, though it was a late-ish Monday night and it was hard to get all that pumped up after a busy weekend and most of a full work week ahead.
Openers Love Is All were ok. They seemed a little too energetic for a Monday night. They had a saxophone and a lot of random shouting and manic commotion. It reminded me of The B-52s or maybe Super Furry Animals. They had bad lyrics too but they got a pass for being Swedish. The girl singer reminded me of the singer from Fight Like Apes. Anyway I thought they were ok but I wasn’t really in the mood. They could impress me under other circumstances, perhaps. But I really just wanted to see the ‘droids.
And Japandroids did not disappoint. Ok, maybe I had hyped them up a little too much in my mind and was a little let down by the guitar tone (it seemed too quiet and too clean). And maybe I hate the Rock and Roll Hotel as a venue (I was pretty far back from the stage and you can’t see anything if you are more than 5 rows from the front). But those are minor quibbles. Fun times!
Here’s “The Boys Are Leaving Town”:
The guitarist — I guess I should call him Brian, since he introduced himself and Dave repeatedly — seemed pretty jazzed about the whole night, or at least he faked it convincingly, running all around, chatting with the crowd, playing stoopid fun riffs. The two of them played well off of one another and reminded me of a pop version of Lightning Bolt. The duo dynamic is pretty popular in indie music these days but I don’t think it works terribly often. Japandroids pulled it off.
Occasionally I was reminded of music unexpectedly during their set: here a Smashing Pumpkins vibe, there a Dead Meadow riff. But mostly it was what I expected: fun and basic pop.
Here’s “Young Hearts Spark Fire” with its irresistible “whooooahhh”s:
Sometimes it is thrilling to just enjoy simple pleasures and pop songs. This seems to be the Japandroids manifesto, as they sing in the song above — “I don’t wanna worry about dying, I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls.” Awesome philosophy.
“Rockers East Vancouver”:
They played pretty much all of their songs off of Post-Nothing, including my favorite, “Sovereignty.” And they played a couple other songs that were older, and ended the set with a cover of mcclusky‘s “To Hell With Good Intentions.” Brian introduced that one by claiming they only played it at the end of great shows, and that it wasn’t as good as the original. He was right about both — it wasn’t even half as good as the original, but it was a great show.
I don’t pay too much attention to bands that are hot on the internet: the p4k bands, the blog-hyped bands, the college bands, the hipster bands. But a few of my friends like The xx and I listened to them enough, and liked them enough, to check them out at 6th & I Synagogue on a Sunday afternoon.
It was a strange show. Weirdly, I was both impressed and disappointed at the same time, but it was a pleasant way to spend an hour. It gave me several things to reflect and pontificate upon.
(They played two shows back-to-back — I was at the first but I can’t tell which show the following videos were taken at.)
So what impressed me about The xx was the sound quality, the guitar playing (occasionally it reminded me of The Cure), and the integration of electronics into their music. I have been grappling for a while with the problem of electronic rock in performance and am sort of reaching a breakthrough on what I would like to see regarding this particular dialectic. Basically it works like this:
THESIS: Play real instruments live if you want to call it rock and roll
ANTITHESIS: It is cool to write music on a computer, and cheap and effective to just hit play on an iPod while you sing and prance about
SYNTHESIS: Play some real instruments live; don’t try to just pipe in pre-programmed electronic music; have a designated person who can play keyboards, turn knobs, bang on a drum occasionally, and generally make the electronic music visually interesting.
The xx pulled off this synthesis as well as anyone I’ve seen; they had a third guy doing all kinds of cool stuff, including taking to a drumkit at one point. Thanks, xx! This is what I am looking for in electronic-based rock music.
The negative side to this concert was that The xx’s live music, while it sounded great, came across as more conventional and less quirky than their album suggested. There is something sort of unique about the album: it has a dreamy oddness to it that caught my ear and made it stand out (a little) from the crowd of similar bands. The recording is intimate, and the songs are skeletal and fragile, and it doesn’t sound exactly like anything else. I went into the concert not expecting that sound to translate well to a large audience — and it probably wouldn’t have. They scaled it up and fleshed it out a bit for the live show, and again, I thought it sounded good, it just lost a little something that made the recording intriguing in the first place. I am not sure what else they could do, though.
I was a little surprised to see the passion of their fans. This is a band that has only been in the public consciousness for like 6 months, and only has like 40 minutes of recorded music to their name. I can see really liking The xx — but can you love a band that is so new? Could they be your favorite band? It seems unlikely, but I guess I am old and cynical. I will let the kids have their silly crushes…
The other thing at this show was that I felt like I was coming at the performance from a much different angle than most people. My methods of discovering and listening to music are hopelessly retro. I knew all the songs from listening to their album, but I had this feeling like everybody else knew them from some other source: a blog-based hit, or a tv show soundtrack, or something.
I had the feeling most strongly when they played their encore song, “Stars,” and the crowd went nuts. Is this their popular song? How would I know? I am out of the loop. Oh well. It was pretty good stuff:
