Explosions!
I had the distinct kinda pleasure to see Explosions in the Sky the other night. I say kinda because they’re one of those weird bands that I can never decide if I really like that much or not. If my (often) frightening last.fm stats are any indication, I love the group. And if you’d take a look at my eMusic review, you’d think the same thing.
But I found myself relatively disappointed after the Explosions gig for a reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Was it the fact that they played at the Warsaw (a venue known for its less than stellar sound)? (The louds were nearly never loud enough, nor were the softs soft enough for my taste.) Or was it just the fact that the group simply didn’t have much aside from exactly what they produce on record? Aside from a couple of Pete Townshend windmills, all the crowd got was a good deal of moderate headbanding and very intense swaying back and forth.
All in all, it left a pretty weird taste in my mouth – how can a band that I ostensibly like so much disappoint me so greatly? Or is that just what favorite bands do when they aren’t as great as you want them to be? Maybe I just need to see them live again to figure it out.
The point? What bands have you seen live lately that have made you question what you hear on record? Anybody made you go back and find nuances that you never heard before? Anybody made you never want to listen to their music again?
Polvo made me never want to listen to them again. They were so dreadfully obnoxious and arrogant between songs that, by the end of their set, I was determined to never hear them play another note, live or on CD. I haven’t. That night, both fIREHOSE and Mystery Machine mopped the floor with them.
Archers of Loaf bored the hell out of me twice and I eventually stopped listening to them though I still feel some nostalgia towards them.
Pixies both delighted me (in ‘90) and bored the hell out of me (in ‘93). Their second gig was so unbelievably awful that I vowed to never see them again. i was quite happy when they split and found it laughable when they reformed.
Some bands that I love live but barely listen to on record: Pere Ubu, Constantines, Snitches, Marah.
Incidentally, I’ve seen EitS once and thought they were fantastic. I’ll be seeing them again in a month or so and am looking forward to it.
I felt a similar disappointment when I saw The Shins live for the first time. It was on the Chutes Too Narrow tour; I’d been obsessed with Oh, Inverted World since it came out and all my hip-happenin’ indie friends had seen them already and touted how amazing they were live. It’s such a blow when bands you’ve spent a significant chunk of time listening to turn out to suck in concert. All the factors were right: I was with my fellow Shins-loving best friend, it was at my favorite venue ever (Variety Playhouse in Atlanta), and the show was sold out. But once they started playing, everything sounded so tinny and distant, like they were playing at the other end of an airplane hangar. James Mercer’s voice was weak and seemed kind of dispassionate; it was almost like watching a passably good Shins cover band. Bah humbug.
But this past November the complete opposite thing happened. I went to go see The Hold Steady despite the fact that I hadn’t been able to form a connection to any of their recorded material, and they completely won me over. Mostly it was Craig Finn, who’s got to be one of the most affable, inviting performers ever. It seems so rare these days to see bands who look really excited to be playing together onstage, and in front of your particular crowd. (I live in a place where indie/unsigned/not-well-known-nationally bands sometimes end up playing to crowds of 10-15 people, and it usually takes less than 2 whole songs to figure out which bands are going to play their hearts out anyway — Man Man, Ted Leo — and which ones couldn’t give less of a damn upon seeing that they don’t have a screaming mass to cater to.) Anyway, the day after that kick-ass Hold Steady show I downloaded all the Lifter Puller on emusic, plus Separation Sunday.