mandy moore's new album was streaming on aol today, so partially out of respect for mr. adams and partially because the album had already been touted as a new direction for moore, i streamed it whilst grading. and it's not bad. i mean, it's absolutely not my style of music and i will probably never listen to it again, but the lyrics were (mostly) solid, the songs simultaneously catchy but not so simple that they were insulting. there were also a lot of really nice, small production details and odd instrument flourishes.
now maybe i'll finally listen to wilco (the album). or maybe i'll just fall asleep on my desk.
May 26, 2009
i listened to the new DMB album on pandora
after slinging shit about DMB pretty much since 2004 (aka the last time they came out with any new, interesting songs...and just like the batch of new interesting songs before these, scrapped them in favor of largely bland radio-fare songs and wandering, ungrounded songs on stand up), i was all ready to dislike the new album. though i thought the first single "funny the way it is" was decent, it didn't bowl me over with enthusiasm. i used to be a huge DMB fan (weird, huh?) and this was actually the first album of theirs that i haven't planned to buy the day it is released.
fortunately, pandora was streaming it for free today. and it's pretty good. i'm to the point now where i can recognize that maybe my problem with the post-before these crowded streets DMB is an issue i have with their style of music, and not the fact that the music is objectively bad. i mean, they've had songs on each albums since BTCS that have been good, but those albums mostly contain tracks that i'm going to skip over or that i'm going to be less excited about hearing the opening notes of in concert (and i think most DMB fans would agree with me here). i really, REALLY liked 2003's some devil, but stand up did nothing for me, except for a few of the songs that were eventually redeemed in concert but still aren't at all impressive on record. even back in the "good old days", DMB was a band like phish for me: you buy the albums understanding that they're reference points. the band doesn't make the "definitive" version of each song for the album; instead, they are blueprint versions that lay out the foundation for later live versions to build on. but even live, for the last few years, DMB hasn't really done anything for me. i like them a bit better now, but i have a sneaking suspicion that this is simply because they've added a trumpet and guitar guru tim reynolds and lost the keyboards. this year and last, they have/had a more aggressive, guitar-y sound that, while not necessarily better, it at least different.
anyway, the new record. it reminds me a lot of stand up, actually. though with more horns and much, MUCH better lyrics. thank god. but each song still has that sort of 21st-century DMB structure to it: fast-paced horns-and-drums intro, dave sings a lot, quasi-arhythmically, about some things. then there's a catchy chorus, and a bridge wherein things slow down and dave sings a bit more rhythmically. somewhere there's in instrumental break for a few seconds, or a few seconds of scat singing, or both at the same time. then the song ends and we do it again. it's not bad (at all). i like the hell out of the first few songs on this album. it's just that as i got further in, i started to get a little bored. there's nothing to shake up the monotony except for a few acoustic-style ballads...and dave's repetitive, almost rap-like lyric style doesn't lend itself well to songs where there aren't a lot of other things going on. some of the acoustic-y songs are really gorgeous, but after the eleven-thousandth repetition of "you and me baby", you feel like you're watching a commercial and not listening to an artist who has written songs like "the dreaming tree".
song structure aside, this album sounds a lot different. there are a lot more layers of sound flying around than on stand up, yet they blend together more smoothly. there are some great trumpet parts, and reynolds gets a few great little breaks. this is the first time in a long time that some DMB songs have sounded actually "new". they've moved on to something new, and it's a good thing...i'm just not sure that i personally like it all that much. i hope other people do, though.
addendum: i also downloaded phish's "time turns elastic" today. i preordered the orchestra piece that this song is the heart of (written by trey and don hart) a few months ago, but it hasn't been released yet...i'm guessing this phish version is a rewrite of the whole orchestra piece for phish's new album. it's a 13 minute-long, largely orchestrated piece, and on first listen i like it. it's hard to say much more on a new phish song. there's so much going on in it, i'm going to have mull over it for awhile and digest the details. two odd things:
1. the jamming/instrumental parts in this piece aren't as trey-centric as you might expect. his
guitar is there, but there's a lot more going on. you hear mike a lot more than you are probably used to. i like this. as much as i like listening to trey rip on his guitar and drown everything else out, he's been doing that for 23 years now, and it's nice to hear something different going on. however, will this kind of a mix make live shows less energetic? probably.
2. lots of trey singing. actually, this piece made me think first of bar 17, trey's solo album. there are a lot of interesting melodic twists and turns and key changes, but unlike, say, "divided sky" or "you enjoy myself", the instruments don't just get to shine on their own; trey is usually singing along with them. the lyrics are pretty standard phish-y fare: whimsical, semi-confusing, semi-comforting. but after about 8 minutes of hearing trey sing about being wrapped in melody and darkness, i honestly wanted to just hear the band rip loose and play some music. they do, towards the end, but it was sort of frustrating waiting that long. this is very cool, and even cooler that they made it available early (and even cooler that steve lillywhite is producing this album), so i'm not complaining. i'm just a little worried by the prospect of new phish shows/material starting to lean on these slow, introspective ballads too much that there's nothing to jump up and down to. this weekend, sun kil moon gave me an education in what happens when a really solid band plays it too straight on stage, and i don't want to have to hear that lesson again for two whole days when i see phish at the gorge in august.
i'm going to just go ahead and listen to the new wilco in a bit. thoughts pending.
fortunately, pandora was streaming it for free today. and it's pretty good. i'm to the point now where i can recognize that maybe my problem with the post-before these crowded streets DMB is an issue i have with their style of music, and not the fact that the music is objectively bad. i mean, they've had songs on each albums since BTCS that have been good, but those albums mostly contain tracks that i'm going to skip over or that i'm going to be less excited about hearing the opening notes of in concert (and i think most DMB fans would agree with me here). i really, REALLY liked 2003's some devil, but stand up did nothing for me, except for a few of the songs that were eventually redeemed in concert but still aren't at all impressive on record. even back in the "good old days", DMB was a band like phish for me: you buy the albums understanding that they're reference points. the band doesn't make the "definitive" version of each song for the album; instead, they are blueprint versions that lay out the foundation for later live versions to build on. but even live, for the last few years, DMB hasn't really done anything for me. i like them a bit better now, but i have a sneaking suspicion that this is simply because they've added a trumpet and guitar guru tim reynolds and lost the keyboards. this year and last, they have/had a more aggressive, guitar-y sound that, while not necessarily better, it at least different.
anyway, the new record. it reminds me a lot of stand up, actually. though with more horns and much, MUCH better lyrics. thank god. but each song still has that sort of 21st-century DMB structure to it: fast-paced horns-and-drums intro, dave sings a lot, quasi-arhythmically, about some things. then there's a catchy chorus, and a bridge wherein things slow down and dave sings a bit more rhythmically. somewhere there's in instrumental break for a few seconds, or a few seconds of scat singing, or both at the same time. then the song ends and we do it again. it's not bad (at all). i like the hell out of the first few songs on this album. it's just that as i got further in, i started to get a little bored. there's nothing to shake up the monotony except for a few acoustic-style ballads...and dave's repetitive, almost rap-like lyric style doesn't lend itself well to songs where there aren't a lot of other things going on. some of the acoustic-y songs are really gorgeous, but after the eleven-thousandth repetition of "you and me baby", you feel like you're watching a commercial and not listening to an artist who has written songs like "the dreaming tree".
song structure aside, this album sounds a lot different. there are a lot more layers of sound flying around than on stand up, yet they blend together more smoothly. there are some great trumpet parts, and reynolds gets a few great little breaks. this is the first time in a long time that some DMB songs have sounded actually "new". they've moved on to something new, and it's a good thing...i'm just not sure that i personally like it all that much. i hope other people do, though.
addendum: i also downloaded phish's "time turns elastic" today. i preordered the orchestra piece that this song is the heart of (written by trey and don hart) a few months ago, but it hasn't been released yet...i'm guessing this phish version is a rewrite of the whole orchestra piece for phish's new album. it's a 13 minute-long, largely orchestrated piece, and on first listen i like it. it's hard to say much more on a new phish song. there's so much going on in it, i'm going to have mull over it for awhile and digest the details. two odd things:
1. the jamming/instrumental parts in this piece aren't as trey-centric as you might expect. his
guitar is there, but there's a lot more going on. you hear mike a lot more than you are probably used to. i like this. as much as i like listening to trey rip on his guitar and drown everything else out, he's been doing that for 23 years now, and it's nice to hear something different going on. however, will this kind of a mix make live shows less energetic? probably.
2. lots of trey singing. actually, this piece made me think first of bar 17, trey's solo album. there are a lot of interesting melodic twists and turns and key changes, but unlike, say, "divided sky" or "you enjoy myself", the instruments don't just get to shine on their own; trey is usually singing along with them. the lyrics are pretty standard phish-y fare: whimsical, semi-confusing, semi-comforting. but after about 8 minutes of hearing trey sing about being wrapped in melody and darkness, i honestly wanted to just hear the band rip loose and play some music. they do, towards the end, but it was sort of frustrating waiting that long. this is very cool, and even cooler that they made it available early (and even cooler that steve lillywhite is producing this album), so i'm not complaining. i'm just a little worried by the prospect of new phish shows/material starting to lean on these slow, introspective ballads too much that there's nothing to jump up and down to. this weekend, sun kil moon gave me an education in what happens when a really solid band plays it too straight on stage, and i don't want to have to hear that lesson again for two whole days when i see phish at the gorge in august.
i'm going to just go ahead and listen to the new wilco in a bit. thoughts pending.
oregon, part two: the words part two
thanks to the somewhat structured nature of the sun kil moon show, the most exciting part of the night in portland came in getting out of the city. first, it seemed as if the parking garage in which we'd left the car had closed down at some point earlier in the night, potentially trapping us inside. having little experience with parking garages myself, i panicked a bit. i drove around the deck, trying to find a non-gated exit, then considered driving out along a sidewalk and potentially destroying my car in the process. next, LD tried lifting the entrance gate, but to no avail. finally, we called the 24-hour emergency parking deck number, only to be told the gate would automatically open if we drove right up to it. and it did. go figure.
next, my small detour to get to a taco bell ended up causing us to have to drive in circles on portland's one-way roads for about an hour until we figured out how to get to I-5 South, which involved some turns on roads more convoluted than any i've seen in my entire life (including my nine cross-country trips and driving through 46 states). luckily, we survived. i had to employ a bit of the cold-air screaming technique in order to stay awake en route to eugene, but we finally rolled in around 3am and crashed in the hotel (the same econo lodge we'd stayed in en route to SF).
the next afternoon was spent walking around eugene (which turned out to be a lot less walkable and lot dirtier and potentially dangerous than portland, surprisingly). then it was to the mcdonald theatre for m. ward. the mcdonald theatre was much nicer than the wonder ballroom. there was a large GA balcony area, and even some seats on the floor (which we sat in until the idiots next to us annoyed me nearly to suicide, and then we spent the rest of the show standing). the sound was provided by much more than 2 huge speakers and was distributed throughout the room in a fashion that didn't hurt ears even when m. ward was at his electric guitariest.
the opener was some band whose name i can't remember (but whose name i shall enter here if i do in fact remember later). they were actually quite good; sort of in the vein of uncle tupelo and the jayhawks, only angrier. i talked to the lead singer for a few minutes outside after their set and he was a really nice guy. they were especially enjoyable because they had a tendency to break out these weird prog-rock jams in the middle of their rockabilly-type songs. the only real downside was that a found a lot of their lyrics really straightforward and almost juvenile...the type of band that goes for an entire song based around a phrase like "i love you and it hurts" as opposed to something more originally or at least more originally phrased. but they were fun to sit through, which is more than i can say for a lot of opening bands.
then - OH FUCK - m. ward. i've heard countless times how good this guy is in concert, but it did not prepare me to have my face melted entirely off of my skull within the first two songs. these guys literally did not slow down the entire show...the show lasted only about an hour and ten minutes (counting two one-song encores), but i can't complain other than to just say i wish there had been more simply because it was so good. the lighting on the stage was unique (including a projected old-style window, which showed an outdoor scene that slowly changed from day to night as the show went on, and one song that lit the entire back of the stage in white light, but blacked out all the other lights so the band looked like three-dimensional shadows...i really lack the language to explain how cool this was). ward's vocals were amazing and spot-on throughout, and the band was going from song to song so fast that at one point ward was literally running from the piano to the guitar tech (presumably to keep the momentum going, though i suppose it could have been because he hated us). oh, and he played two songs solo, including one song that had literally the best solo guitar jam i've ever heard in my life (and this is after years of listening to trey and phish and the grateful dead and nels cline and various other completely insane guitarists...this was amazing to the point that i was screaming/cheering at the end before i even realized it consciously). and on top of that (of course) he's incredible at the piano...he played "roll over beethoven" at one point and i thought the roof was going to come off of the place. both performances were pretty weird about photography and such, so i sincerely doubt that there's any footage or recordings going around, but i'll keep my fingers crossed. i would love to see m. ward again, and (i never though i would say this) i'd actually prefer to see him without zooey deschanel because his bringing of the rock was so phenomenal. honestly, if i wasn't so invested emotionally in the cardinals and wilco (and thus invested so much in the shows of theirs i've seen), i would definitely say this was my favorite concert of all time. instead, it comes in a definite fourth-best and i will absolutely drive to portland to see this guy play again. the ticket was 15 bucks. FIFTEEN BUCKS.
next, my small detour to get to a taco bell ended up causing us to have to drive in circles on portland's one-way roads for about an hour until we figured out how to get to I-5 South, which involved some turns on roads more convoluted than any i've seen in my entire life (including my nine cross-country trips and driving through 46 states). luckily, we survived. i had to employ a bit of the cold-air screaming technique in order to stay awake en route to eugene, but we finally rolled in around 3am and crashed in the hotel (the same econo lodge we'd stayed in en route to SF).
the next afternoon was spent walking around eugene (which turned out to be a lot less walkable and lot dirtier and potentially dangerous than portland, surprisingly). then it was to the mcdonald theatre for m. ward. the mcdonald theatre was much nicer than the wonder ballroom. there was a large GA balcony area, and even some seats on the floor (which we sat in until the idiots next to us annoyed me nearly to suicide, and then we spent the rest of the show standing). the sound was provided by much more than 2 huge speakers and was distributed throughout the room in a fashion that didn't hurt ears even when m. ward was at his electric guitariest.
the opener was some band whose name i can't remember (but whose name i shall enter here if i do in fact remember later). they were actually quite good; sort of in the vein of uncle tupelo and the jayhawks, only angrier. i talked to the lead singer for a few minutes outside after their set and he was a really nice guy. they were especially enjoyable because they had a tendency to break out these weird prog-rock jams in the middle of their rockabilly-type songs. the only real downside was that a found a lot of their lyrics really straightforward and almost juvenile...the type of band that goes for an entire song based around a phrase like "i love you and it hurts" as opposed to something more originally or at least more originally phrased. but they were fun to sit through, which is more than i can say for a lot of opening bands.
then - OH FUCK - m. ward. i've heard countless times how good this guy is in concert, but it did not prepare me to have my face melted entirely off of my skull within the first two songs. these guys literally did not slow down the entire show...the show lasted only about an hour and ten minutes (counting two one-song encores), but i can't complain other than to just say i wish there had been more simply because it was so good. the lighting on the stage was unique (including a projected old-style window, which showed an outdoor scene that slowly changed from day to night as the show went on, and one song that lit the entire back of the stage in white light, but blacked out all the other lights so the band looked like three-dimensional shadows...i really lack the language to explain how cool this was). ward's vocals were amazing and spot-on throughout, and the band was going from song to song so fast that at one point ward was literally running from the piano to the guitar tech (presumably to keep the momentum going, though i suppose it could have been because he hated us). oh, and he played two songs solo, including one song that had literally the best solo guitar jam i've ever heard in my life (and this is after years of listening to trey and phish and the grateful dead and nels cline and various other completely insane guitarists...this was amazing to the point that i was screaming/cheering at the end before i even realized it consciously). and on top of that (of course) he's incredible at the piano...he played "roll over beethoven" at one point and i thought the roof was going to come off of the place. both performances were pretty weird about photography and such, so i sincerely doubt that there's any footage or recordings going around, but i'll keep my fingers crossed. i would love to see m. ward again, and (i never though i would say this) i'd actually prefer to see him without zooey deschanel because his bringing of the rock was so phenomenal. honestly, if i wasn't so invested emotionally in the cardinals and wilco (and thus invested so much in the shows of theirs i've seen), i would definitely say this was my favorite concert of all time. instead, it comes in a definite fourth-best and i will absolutely drive to portland to see this guy play again. the ticket was 15 bucks. FIFTEEN BUCKS.
oregon, part two: the words part one
so this past weekend i went to oregon for a pair of concerts (and just to go to oregon, because, really, why not?). i saw sun kil moon on thursday in portland and m. ward on friday in eugene. saturday was spent driving back home.
LD and i left thursday morning, and the drive to portland was pretty straightforward. i've driven the 82/84 route enough times this year that at this point it's a matter of course (except for that one time when i missed my turn, drove 2 hours west instead of south, and had to shortcut through an indian reservation to get to lincoln city on time, but we won't talk about that). but it was still really beautiful, being that weird part of spring/summer in this part of the country when everything is completely grown-in but it's still not ridiculously hot yet.
i had decided ahead of time that it just made more sense to get a room in eugene for two days instead of trying to drive to eugene the morning after the sun kil moon show, so we rolled into portland around 4pm, and ended up spending about four hours just wandering around town. having never spent time in portland before, i have to say that i was really impressed. it really is a unique city, even compared to eugene or seattle or SF. i really, really liked what i saw, and though i can also now better understand the usual criticisms that are levelled at portland, i personally loved the hell out of it. it was such a nice day and the city was SO AMAZINGLY WALKABLE that i was sort of disappointed when we had to filter into the wonder ballroom for the show. the ballroom itself was literally in the middle of a well-treed residential area, which is awesome considering they draw pretty well-known acts (RA has played there before, and they had posters for a lot of up-and-coming indie acts on the walls). there was a cafe under the ballroom itself, and while it was one of those seattle-chic type indie-rock cafes (lots of mirrors, candles, and people in dark, tight clothes and angry makeup), we got a shitload of food for a few dollars and went upstairs totally stuffed and not feeling ripped off.
the venue itself was not the best i've ever been at. it was pretty much all floor GA, and over-21 and under-21 were separated by a huge divider that took up way too much room on the floor (ever heard of a rope, security? no need to build the berlin wall indoors). the crowd really only filled half the floor at any given time (i actually spent most of the second part of the show sitting on the floor in the back and i could still clearly see the stage). the entire place was wood floors and thin walls, and it didn't help that all the sound was provided by two HUGE wall speakers...the resulting sound was very tinny and piercing, which doesn't help especially when you're already listening to sun kil moon. some of the more guitar-laden tunes were actually physically painful to listen to. other people in the audience were also cringing.
my streak of good openers continued on this trip. the last two shows i've seen were wilco (who had fleet foxes as their opener) and mason jennings (who had zach gill as his opener), and sun kil moon had matt costa as their opener. having already heard one of his albums, and having found it to be a little too firmly in the vein of jack johnson's music, i wasn't really expecting anything special. i was very surprised, then, to realize on the way back to the car that i very much enjoyed costa's performance more than sun kil moon's. he played a few acoustic songs, and also played a few songs on a beautiful blue hollowbody gibson, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist. it was hard to catch a lot of the lyrics (and what i did catch were fairly straightforward; not bad, just not mind-blowing). the songs themselves, though, were structurally really interesting. everytime he began a song that seemed that it would simply lead into basic pop/folk territory, there would be a really interesting bridge, or transition, or riff that popped up. he also ran the gamut from jazz, to blues, to folk, to pop, and he mixed all of the genres together even within songs. it was just really different from what i expected. on top of that, he was a truly unique and engaging performer. he communicated with the audience (not required, but nice) and he also spent a bit of time during a few songs improvising and doing similar things that you just wouldn't expect a solo performer to do much of. i can't really explain what it was that was so positive about his performance for me, but i'm definitely going to check out more of his music now.
sun kil moon wasn't bad; quite the opposite. their albums (which i love) present a band that is very technically proficient and has one very particular sound. so that's what i expected, and that's what i got. the band's playing was really tight, and mark kozelek's voice sounded great. the drummer also sung some pretty incredible harmonies. the thing is, every song they played sounded exactly the same. like i said, this is already sort of the case with the albums, but the nuances of the production bring out at least small, different details in each song. live, with only four instruments to work with, the band essentially could have been playing the same song for the entire 2 hours and it would have sounded much the same. mark and the other guitarist did very little in terms of using pedals or effects to switch things up, and although the drummer was fantastic, he played largely the same few beats and fills throughout. once again, the band was incredibly talented. but i got the impression that they knew they were playing for a room full of 300 or so people and they were content to just go through the motions as a result. that in and of itself was not a huge deal, but having seen a lot of bands that are still trying to "make it" play their hearts out in front of even smaller crowds, i guess this performance just left a bad taste in my mouth in the sense that i felt we were being given an orchestrated product rather than a performance. i don't know if that makes sense. it wasn't bad, but i remember saying something to LD when we left along the lines of "if i'd have known they were just going to play by-the-book versions of all of their songs with inferior mixing, i would have just stayed home and listened to the albums". their technical abilities were impressive, but i don't see why you'd bother to see a band live just for that. on the other hand, they did close with "tonight the sky" and the encore was pretty great (they finally switched up instruments and played a mostly acoustic modest mouse cover).
LD and i left thursday morning, and the drive to portland was pretty straightforward. i've driven the 82/84 route enough times this year that at this point it's a matter of course (except for that one time when i missed my turn, drove 2 hours west instead of south, and had to shortcut through an indian reservation to get to lincoln city on time, but we won't talk about that). but it was still really beautiful, being that weird part of spring/summer in this part of the country when everything is completely grown-in but it's still not ridiculously hot yet.
i had decided ahead of time that it just made more sense to get a room in eugene for two days instead of trying to drive to eugene the morning after the sun kil moon show, so we rolled into portland around 4pm, and ended up spending about four hours just wandering around town. having never spent time in portland before, i have to say that i was really impressed. it really is a unique city, even compared to eugene or seattle or SF. i really, really liked what i saw, and though i can also now better understand the usual criticisms that are levelled at portland, i personally loved the hell out of it. it was such a nice day and the city was SO AMAZINGLY WALKABLE that i was sort of disappointed when we had to filter into the wonder ballroom for the show. the ballroom itself was literally in the middle of a well-treed residential area, which is awesome considering they draw pretty well-known acts (RA has played there before, and they had posters for a lot of up-and-coming indie acts on the walls). there was a cafe under the ballroom itself, and while it was one of those seattle-chic type indie-rock cafes (lots of mirrors, candles, and people in dark, tight clothes and angry makeup), we got a shitload of food for a few dollars and went upstairs totally stuffed and not feeling ripped off.
the venue itself was not the best i've ever been at. it was pretty much all floor GA, and over-21 and under-21 were separated by a huge divider that took up way too much room on the floor (ever heard of a rope, security? no need to build the berlin wall indoors). the crowd really only filled half the floor at any given time (i actually spent most of the second part of the show sitting on the floor in the back and i could still clearly see the stage). the entire place was wood floors and thin walls, and it didn't help that all the sound was provided by two HUGE wall speakers...the resulting sound was very tinny and piercing, which doesn't help especially when you're already listening to sun kil moon. some of the more guitar-laden tunes were actually physically painful to listen to. other people in the audience were also cringing.
my streak of good openers continued on this trip. the last two shows i've seen were wilco (who had fleet foxes as their opener) and mason jennings (who had zach gill as his opener), and sun kil moon had matt costa as their opener. having already heard one of his albums, and having found it to be a little too firmly in the vein of jack johnson's music, i wasn't really expecting anything special. i was very surprised, then, to realize on the way back to the car that i very much enjoyed costa's performance more than sun kil moon's. he played a few acoustic songs, and also played a few songs on a beautiful blue hollowbody gibson, accompanied by an acoustic guitarist. it was hard to catch a lot of the lyrics (and what i did catch were fairly straightforward; not bad, just not mind-blowing). the songs themselves, though, were structurally really interesting. everytime he began a song that seemed that it would simply lead into basic pop/folk territory, there would be a really interesting bridge, or transition, or riff that popped up. he also ran the gamut from jazz, to blues, to folk, to pop, and he mixed all of the genres together even within songs. it was just really different from what i expected. on top of that, he was a truly unique and engaging performer. he communicated with the audience (not required, but nice) and he also spent a bit of time during a few songs improvising and doing similar things that you just wouldn't expect a solo performer to do much of. i can't really explain what it was that was so positive about his performance for me, but i'm definitely going to check out more of his music now.
sun kil moon wasn't bad; quite the opposite. their albums (which i love) present a band that is very technically proficient and has one very particular sound. so that's what i expected, and that's what i got. the band's playing was really tight, and mark kozelek's voice sounded great. the drummer also sung some pretty incredible harmonies. the thing is, every song they played sounded exactly the same. like i said, this is already sort of the case with the albums, but the nuances of the production bring out at least small, different details in each song. live, with only four instruments to work with, the band essentially could have been playing the same song for the entire 2 hours and it would have sounded much the same. mark and the other guitarist did very little in terms of using pedals or effects to switch things up, and although the drummer was fantastic, he played largely the same few beats and fills throughout. once again, the band was incredibly talented. but i got the impression that they knew they were playing for a room full of 300 or so people and they were content to just go through the motions as a result. that in and of itself was not a huge deal, but having seen a lot of bands that are still trying to "make it" play their hearts out in front of even smaller crowds, i guess this performance just left a bad taste in my mouth in the sense that i felt we were being given an orchestrated product rather than a performance. i don't know if that makes sense. it wasn't bad, but i remember saying something to LD when we left along the lines of "if i'd have known they were just going to play by-the-book versions of all of their songs with inferior mixing, i would have just stayed home and listened to the albums". their technical abilities were impressive, but i don't see why you'd bother to see a band live just for that. on the other hand, they did close with "tonight the sky" and the encore was pretty great (they finally switched up instruments and played a mostly acoustic modest mouse cover).
oregon, part two: the pictures
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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| From summer '09 |
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