Posts Tagged “uk indie”

Jun 19 2008

The Long Blondes, 2008-06-02 Great American Music Hall

Posted by: dave in concert, tags: great american music hall, kate jackson, long blondes, uk indie

Okay, I originally wrote up a big negative thing about the show, because I honestly didn’t enjoy it a lot. I thought the band looked bored, it seemed like they were legitimately pained to play some of their older songs, despite only having played a single show at a tiny club in San Francisco before… and the show was rather short for a headliner. The first time I saw them, I chalked everything up to it being their first US tour. This time, I don’t really know. Maybe they were just tired and didn’t care by the time they got all the way to San Francisco, I’ve heard it happens to a lot of bands. Regardless for the price and the time and all that, not really a good show. Oh well. The recording is nice anyway, and without visuals it holds up a lot better, but honestly most of the band just had a “lets just get this done so we can go home” look on their faces the entire time. Kate was into it, but the rest of the band… not so much. And that’s kinda disappointing to me.

Also, nobody on flickr took pictures and made them available to the public, so I can’t link a picture for this show. Double bummer eh?

setlist:

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

4 Comments »

May 13 2008

Elbow, 2008-05-08 Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco, CA

Posted by: dave in concert, tags: bimbo's 365 club, elbow, uk indie

Elbow is sometimes a difficult band to see. They write great songs, and Guy Garvey has a great voice, there’s no doubt. But, their songs are often slow ballads and not necessarily the stuff you can rock out with. This makes for a difficult live show I think, trying to keep the average crowd enthusiastic when for the most part if you give anyone a chance to hear themselves talk, they’ll take it as an opportunity to do so, even if the band is still on the stage and trying to perform. I was plagued at this particular show by a really coked up bunch of people who were trying really hard to be more impressive than the band. One guy couldn’t stop moving, maybe he wasn’t coked up and maybe he had Parkinson’s, I don’t know, but he couldn’t stop talking to everyone around him in such a distracting way that I personally found it really difficult to even concentrate on the band.
I personally like the long drawn out vocals and rather lush arrangement with the music. I don’t know what most people were expecting when they went to the show honestly. They did a lot of songs from their newest album, and a handful of older songs as well. It’s nothing I can complain about, but honestly it’s nothing that would have made me say “best concert ever”. The real highlight for me was One Day Like This where Guy got the crowd involved on the chorus. I guess I’m a sucker for that sort of thing, I don’t know. Good show, not great, but maybe it was the crowd and I was tired and this isn’t the sort of show for when you’re tired.

setlist:

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

Links:

7 Comments »

Mar 10 2008

British Sea Power 2008-03-01, Bottom of the Hill

Posted by: dave in concert, tags: bottom of the hill, British Sea Power, noise pop, uk, uk indie

I saw British Sea Power on their first US Tour (at least in the South) back in 2004. It was a really fantastic couple of weeks where I got to see Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Dresden Dolls and Vienna Teng all in 8 days. (lots and lots of driving happened). I saw them at a tiny place, my former favorite now long gone venue, Echo Lounge in Atlanta. Usually when you see a band 4 years later, they’ve moved up and on to bigger less intimate sorts of joints. Thank you Noise Pop! They’ve got a really good tendency to put bands in small venues that they’d otherwise have outgrown and this was one of those kinds of shows.

I said back then when I first saw them that it was difficult to really evaluate a band’s live performance when they only have on album of recorded material and handful of singles that you may or may not have heard. Generally they struggle to fill a full headlining set, and usually it’s just regurgitating the album in a random order and that’s that. The show I saw in 2004 was that sort of show, and I’ll be honest it wasn’t that great. I’d coerced a friend into going with me, under the premise that “oh they’re cool they’ve got a couple songs that sound like Coldplay but with some actual rock”. And of course I got a really weird show that bordered on schizophrenia I suppose with a lot of songs sounding very harsh and thrashy. I have a recording, but due to some equipment trouble it’ll never see the light of day.

Flash forward to now: I think their live show has matured quite a bit. They’ve got a lot more material, so they can put together a much better setlist with some variation but keeping a solid groove going. I really like their latest album, I think without a doubt it’s their best yet, so I was glad to see a lot of the songs from the album show up, especially The Great Skua which I think may be their best song. Waving Flags is a close second, because I’m a sucker for a drinking song I suppose. There’s just really a lot of good stuff and I’m happy to hear it in a show. I missed their Open Season tour also, so it’s double nice to see a good handful of those songs sprinkled in. What I didn’t necessarily enjoy, were some of the more “epic” songs. I’m willing to admit that it’s just me, and that other people really like it, but the downside of Noise Pop is that they fill the bill with a couple of local bands, and unfortunately a lot of those local bands are nowhere near the same kind of music you’re waiting to hear… and they’re not good at warming up the crowd and really it just wears you out. I really liked Colourmusic a lot. The other two opening bands, I’m sorry you just weren’t my bag. Unfortunately, the 3 opening bands meant I’d been standing roughly 4 hours before British Sea Power even got on stage, and by the time their set was halfway over I kinda wanted to go home and pass out. Kudos to Bottom of the Hill for running a tight ship and having a real quick 15 min set change between openers and a pretty short set from each of them, but really, after Carrion it was around 1AM and I was in the process of tuning out. I’m sorry, it’s me not you. The curse of Noise Pop I suppose. (true story: I bailed on Feist at Bimbo’s a couple of years ago in the same situation after there was some horrible equipment trouble and the speakers went out halfway through her set… I know I’m a wuss and this was before she got all itunes famous so I should have stayed and all that blah blah whatever).

So yeah, long epic songs at the end of a set at the end of a long day and a longer night, was not a win for me. Still, on the merits of the rest of the show, A+. I really enjoyed it. They’re a fantastically entertaining band, and if the show had been 2 acts shorter I’m sure my attitude would have been better.

setlist: