Posts Tagged “tilly and the wall”

Jul 10 2008

Tilly and the Wall 2008-07-08, Great American Music Hall, SF

Posted by: dave in concert, tags: great american music hall, tilly and the wall

Full circle! For the first time, I get to post an artist for the second time. Tilly and the Wall was the first band I posted here a couple years ago when I got the urge to make a blog just for the stuff I record. I missed their show earlier this year at the Rickshaw Stop because I’d seen the British Sea Power show the night before and I didn’t feel like going out again the next night since it was Noise Pop and inevitably they pack so many bands on the bill that you’re soooo tired before the headliner gets on. Oh well.

Tilly and the Wall’s new album “O” is definitely one of my favorites of the year. It doesn’t hold itself to anyone particular sound, they’re experimenting with a lot of stuff to great success and really bringing a more rock sound to their music while retaining that whole thing that made them awesome in the first place. I think a lot of the songs were definitely conceived with the live show in mind, and that they perhaps needed a few songs where there wasn’t as much focus on the novelty of someone in the band tap dancing out percussion. There’s still plenty of that, but at the show it seemed like at least a little less prominent than in the past. There was a real drummer, but I didn’t see him do a whole lot. I’m not terribly sure how I feel about Beat Control either, since it doesn’t really sound like anything else they’ve ever done and not necessarily in a way I like. I don’t think there was anything but a pre-made beat and keyboards on the song which is totally weird compared to 3 guitars, percussion, and keyboards. I’m glad they didn’t do a whole album like that because while I like their voices, I don’t like the 80’s style dance music revival thing going on. Maybe it’s because I had enough of it the first time and I’m just not in nostalgia mode yet or whatever, but it doesn’t work for me. I guess for the kids that weren’t born until ‘85 or later it’s awesome because it’s brand new to them, but really the song sounds way too much Miami Sound Machine to me and that’s just not my thing.

Anyway. It was a good show! They threw out balloons before the show and the hipsters tried to act like balloons are totally not cool. Seriously guys, have some fun every once in a while okay?

As an aside, I sorta got “busted” during the show. The band was cool with me taping their last show in SF, so I figured it was okay again this time and I didn’t REALLY try to do any sort of hiding of my equipment but I put it all under a hat to keep it out of the way from anyone who might set their drink down on or near my stuff. The security guy came around and asked what I had under the hat, turns out that there was a blinking light and a glow that made it real obvious that I was taping and they had no video/flash photo signs everywhere and he was making sure I wasn’t rolling on video I suppose. Luckily he didn’t shut me down and was totally cool with things.

Setlist:

download the whole show as a .zip file
download the show in lossless FLAC from Dimeadozen.org (registration required)

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Jul 29 2006

Tilly and the Wall, 07-08-2006, Cafe Du Nord

Posted by: dave in concert, tags: cafe du nord, tilly and the wall

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.