SleepingPoliceman

This review is almost two weeks late, but I wanted to make sure I commented on this. I had my eye on this show for a little while, since time has treated Bloc Party’s debut album, Silent Alarm, very well. And I also had the two albums by opening act The Secret Machines, and had downloaded a couple of songs by the opening opening act, Mew.

So when I was in the Pavilion for the Huey Lewis & The News concert early in the week, I swung by the box office to pick up a ticket for the show. Without TicketBastard charges, it was a reasonable thirty bones…considering I would have paid $15 to see any of these bands, it was a steal. Furthermore, because I was going alone like a loser, I grabbed a fourth row seat right in the center of the crowd. Good times.

(More can be read if you click on the “read more” link)

Those in the Boston area might remember that Friday as having an ominous sky and an even more ominous weather forecast. I was lucky enough to get a ride down to the show…which was extraordinarily convenient, since right when I got there the skies began to open up. And I mean, for serious…the rain was pounding on the HarborFleetBankBostonAmericaOfLights Pavilion tent so hard that it sounded like artillery fire, and it rushed down off the tent so quickly that it looked like little waterfalls scattered all around the venue. And since we were near the water, we got to see the lightning crack and jump across the sky and down to the harbor. They covered all the instruments with some poncho-like thing as soon as I got there, and I asked an usher if they ever canceled shows due to inclement weather. (He had never seen it happen since he started working there.)

However, promptly at 7:30, they pulled off the music tarps and Mew came out on stage. This is what the dudes in the band Mew look like:

Ummmm…yeah. So you probably won’t be surprised to find out that the band plays floaty songs that alternate between tinkle-tinkle parts and harder guitar rock outs, all seemingly written in transit from some kind of fairy-tale land. The lead singer (the one in the middle who kind of looks like a refugee from The Dark Crystal) sounded like a cross between Jon Anderson and Thom Yorke…a female cross between them. He was dressed in a purple velvet suit, and could only sing if he was lookng up at the top of the tent like he was afraid to make eye contact with anyone in the crowd. The rest of the band hunched over their instruments as if they were performing surgery on them. They had a video screen with crazy animations, many of them based around weird looking cats, playing during the songs. They opened with an extended five or six minute instrumental, which they also closed with (in reprise format). They didn’t play the one song by them that I really know and kind of like (Snow Brigade). During the one song they played that I kind of knew (Am I Wry? No), they put up on the screen the lyrics to the bridge. Which is fine, except not a good idea when the lyrics you are quoting are: “Diamond ring / Diamond ring / But you can’t find it / Cold is the night.” Needless to say, English is not their first language. (They’re apparently from Copenhagen.)

Anyway, if it seems like I didn’t like them…that’s not entirely true. They were really weird, and they were sort of like a caricature of a latter-day arty band. Still, they only played for half, and while I wasn’t begging for them to stay on stage, I was sort of left wanting more. (More probably meant I wanted them to play the only song by them I had listened to more than once.) The set didn’t make me want to run out and buy their new album, but it also didn’t make me delete the copy of the last album I, uhh, obtained before the show.

So then there was a little break, as the exterior layer of instruments on the stage were peeled back. (It’s sort of funny watching a three band bill…the stage gets bigger and bigger the closer you get to the headliner.) With time going by and the rain slowing down, more people were filing into the Pavilion. I realized that almost everyone there was either in late high school or early college. It was a marked contrast to earlier in the week…I went from being one of the youngest people there to one of the oldest. And, no, I didn’t get any awards or medals for my dramatic insight with the realization that a crowd at a Bloc Party show is different than at a Huey Lewis one.

Anyway, after about twenty minutes or a half hour, The Secret Machines came out. They only have three guys: a guitarist, a keyboard player and a drummer. They play spacey songs as well, but the more Pink Floyd druggie rock kind of spacey. Their light show kicked ass…they had a smoke machine running and were entirely backlit with a colorful assortment of VariLites. So you never actually saw their faces or what they were doing…they were just silhouettes jamming out, and that atmosphere fit the songs perfectly.

They opened with two songs from the first album, Nowhere Again and The Road Leads Where It’s Led; they closed with Lightning Blue Eyes, from the new album. (They did not play the song I most wanted to hear, Sad & Lonely, making me 0-for-2 on this bill.) These three songs were really great, played with a lot of energy, and I got really into them. The rest of their (short) set, however, was sort of blah. I think it was two or three songs (apparently two, looking at the setlist I just found) from the new album that I haven’t gotten into yet. They kind of blended all the songs together, which was a cool trippy effect to go along with the lightshow…but it underscored the band’s fatal flaw. And that flaw is this: I don’t think the drummer is very good. I think he only has one beat he can play (*thump*thump*THUMP*thump*, *thump*thump*THUMP*thump*). He can do it at different speeds, but that’s all he’s got. It makes already-similar-sounding songs come across as really, really same-y. And when they would sort of jam to link the songs together…well, when you only have three people, and one of them isn’t very good, it doesn’t make for the most dynamic performances.

So while I did enjoy their set, I sort of think that I’m over The Secret Machines. It’s not you, Secret Machines. It’s just not working out. We’ll always have those handful of songs by you that I like. No hard feelings.

Important detail of their set: there was a woman who was front row center for this part of the show, and she was standing the whole time, grooving away in her tie-dyed with awkward white person dance moves that made it look like she was totally tripping balls. This woman looked to be about 45 and appeared to be very, very Jewish. Not making any judgements…just saying that she didn’t fit the demographic or profile of the rest of the crowd. And it looked like she had popped about eight tablets of X. She added necessary atmosphere to the show.

So, blah blah…more waiting, more instrument layer peeling. After another manageable wait, Bloc Party hit the stage. They played a slow-ish new song from their just-finished-but-not-yet-released second album, which gave me an opportunity to sort of step back and check out they dynamics of the band. I know it probably shouldn’t matter, but it was strikingly cool how diverse they are. The lead guitarist is a pasty thin white guy with a Flock Of Seagulls haircut, who sort of chilled out to stage right, chopping away at his strings and fiddling with his effects pedals. The bassist was a tall dude who looked like what you’d think a guy in a hip British rock band would look like: a mop of hair, angular face, with the air of sardonic distance about him. The drummer is Asian with glasses, and if he hit the stage with a shirt on, it was off before the first song was over. He also kept making rock drummer poses with his sticks. And the lead singer is a theatrical black guy with short dreads, a wide smile and an incredibly emotive face and voice. Again, it shouldn’t matter how different they looked…but it sort of underscored the energy they brought as a collective unit.

After that first song, they started tearing through songs from the first album, hitting every tune I wanted to hear. The crowd was up and moving for Positive Tension, collectively shouting out the “so fucking useless” part as only 5,000 suburban white American kids can. The lead singer, Kele Okereke, said something like, “Hullo, Boston. This ain’t no tea party…it’s a Bloc Party.” Then he looked embarassed at himself. Before Blue Light, he dedicated it to two girls who had met the band at the train station and requested it. This Modern Love was especially brilliant…everyone (especially me) singing along loudly, and Kele jumping around and hammering out his guitar parts.

In the middle of the set, they played another new song from their upcoming album called Uniform, which for the first two verses seemed like a slow song about suburban teenage conformity, the kind of song that makes you think, “Yeah, that’s nice…Cobain already wrote this song 15 years ago, and did it better. Sorry.” But then halfway through it kicked up a notch and jumped in a whole different direction…I didn’t quite get all the lyrics (I’m bad at hearing songs for the first time in a live setting), but I think it ended up about these young people being sent off to fight wars. Which isn’t groundbreaking content either, but it was a great performance and it seemed like a really well put together song. I’m looking forward to the new album.

The show was very high energy and the band was really, really tight. And being so close, it sort of felt more like a club show than performance in an outdoor venue…I’m sure that only increased my enjoyment. I’m not sure what else to say about them…as I mentioned, they played every song I wanted to hear, and did them all really well. The main set ended with Helicopter, which brought the house down. They busted out some more obscure songs in the encore, including a version of a song that I totally loved but didn’t know the name of. (Further investigation led me to realize that it was called Tulips, and that I already had a copy of the song. Good for me.) During Price Of Gas, Kele jumped off the stage and got up on the first row of seats…which, again, were kind of right in front of me. This led to a bunch of frat-looking dudes rushing that part of the crowd, and he had to clamor back up on the stage relatively quickly. Later in the song, a drunk dude hopped up on the side of the stage to do some dancing. Instead of getting security, they brought him center stage to do some dancing and try to supply the backing vocals. He was moderately successful. When I thought they had gone through all the great songs from Silent Alarm, they brought out Pioneers to end the show, leaving the stage with the repeated mantra, “We will not be the last, we will not be the last.”

So to sum up, Bloc Party kinda kicked all kinds of ass. The other bands were good, but didn’t fully win me over. It was a great concert in a dank and cramped tent. And I didn’t get hit by any lightning. Successful night all around.

Setlists:

Mew (setlist courtesy of the forum on their official site)
Shelter / Swanky / Am I Wry, No / 156 / Special / Comforting Sounds

The Secret Machines (setlist courtesy of their official forum)
Nowhere Again / Road Leads Where It’s Led / Alone, Jealous And Stoned / Daddy’s In The Doldrums / Lightning Blue Eyes

Bloc Party (setlist courtesy of Blog Party)
Waiting For The 7:18 / Positive Tension / Banquet / Blue Light / She’s Hearing Voices / Uniform / This Modern Love / Like Eating Glass / So Here We Are / Helicopter
Encore: Two More Years / Price of Gas / Tulips / The Pioneers

Some Bloc Party mp3s, if you’re interested:

Like Eating Glass (courtesy of salon.com)
Tulips (courtesy of thecrutch.net)
She’s Hearing Voices (live at SXSW) (courtesy of thecrutch.net)

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 10th, 2006 at 12:23 pm by ptm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.