I first really found out about Tilly and the Wall through a piece on Current TV that profiled bands in Omaha, and later through another piece that followed the band on their first tour of Europe. What I saw was fairly interesting, a band that instead of having the normal band setup of a couple of guitars and a drummer, they had… a tap dancer on a large block of wood on stage. I’m a sucker for unique elements in bands, and this has to be the most unique thing I’ve seen in a while. Conveniently, they were going to play a show in San Francisco soon, and I definitely wanted to see if their live show compared to what I’d seen and heard.

Tilly and the Wall is a very fun band to see live. The house was packed, the show was sold out, and the band played a pretty good show. The set was pretty solid and smooth, although one of my pet peeves of any show is starting a show off with a slower-song, because for whatever reason the hipster crowd seems to take a slow/acoustic/instrumental type song as an opportunity to lose focus and tune the band out and start talking about their horrible case of herpes or whatever important things people talk about while at a concert and the band is on stage performing. (it has to be something important right?) Personally, i’d prefer to hear these sorts of songs as encores, or not at all in some cases where the bands have a lot of exciting songs instead.

Anyway, the rest of the show was pretty good, with what I think are the best songs from Bottoms of Barrels, as well as plenty of good older songs from Wild Like Children. Jamie (the tap dancer) just has to be worn out after every show, because the band just didn’t really waste any time between songs. I was really wondering how a live show with leg-powered percussion would work out, but the band really rocks out live. A lot of bands just go through the motions live and try to crank out a show and don’t really do anything to get the audience or themselves into a show. This was a different sort of experience, probably due to the nature of the band being one big collaborative performance, which invites the audience to get into the show as well. In a way, it makes you feel that although you’re in the audience, you’re part of the band and part of the performance too, and it’s definitely one of the more interesting live shows I’ve seen.

However, the band (or the venue) was plagued with sound problems for most of the show. Backup music wasn’t really working, monitors weren’t working properly and overall the sound at the venue was not so great. I don’t know what the real problem was, but I’m a little disappointed that the sound at the show never really came together until the last song for the most part. I still enjoyed the show, but I felt that it could have been a lot better if the sound were done well and not the trouble that it was. I’m going to definitely go see them again when they come around next time, and hopefully they won’t run into the same issues a second time around.

1. Intro
2. Sing Songs Along
3. Fell Down the Stairs
4. Rainbows in the Dark
5. Love Song
6. Reckless
7. Urgency
8. Bad Education
9. The Freest Man (false start)
10. The Freest Man
11. The Ice Storm, Big Gust, and You
12. Brave Day
13. encore break
14. Pictures of Houses
15. Bessa
16. Nights of the Living Dead

Links:

• Myspace: Tilly and the Wall (unofficial)
  
• Official Site (tillyandthewall.com)

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 29th, 2006 at 11:15 pm and is filed under concert.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.