iamserio.us

What a great band these guys are. They played with full energy for 70 minutes straight and never missed a beat. All around, a very fun show as I pulled a pretty good stealth tape and I saw a bunch of old friends from various places.

Yeah, I guess I don’t have much to say other than, here you go:

Liars – 2006-06-10 El Corazon – Seattle, WA
Download: liars2006-06-10.at943.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: liars2006-06-10sample.mp3

Sometimes I go to shows and tape for people when I normally would have just sat at home. Usually it’s a good experience, like when I taped Massive Attack and Murder By Death. Last night I taped The Fall Of Troy for a friend of mine and, overall, it was a good show.

The low points of the show were:

The high points:

The opening bands weren’t terrible but they weren’t really my scene. The whole night was like being transported back to freshman year of college when I would go to shows at this venue all the time (back when it was called The Graceland). The first band, Classic Case, sounded a lot like Thrice. The second and third bands, Showbread and He Is Legend, were both Christian rock acts that I can’t say I hated or loved. They just sort of exist.

The Fall Of Troy, though, can do no wrong. They’re head and shoulders above the other bands on this tour, and not just because Thomas Erak can fucking shred his way around six strings either (because, let me tell you, he can). The band is just so damn tight and spot-on. They’re very good at creating segues into and out of their songs and you’ll never hear a song just like you heard it on the CD.

So here are all of the sets from last night. For all you punk rock kids who need to re-live last night’s get together.

The Fall Of Troy – 2006-06-09 El Corazon – Seattle, WA
Download: fot2006-06-09.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: fot2006-06-09sample.mp3

Update: Someone filmed the new song Excreations with a digital camera and the video turned out decent, so I mixed it with my audio.

Download: Excreations_fixed.mpg

EDIT: Removed opening sets to make space on the server.

I don’t think Eluvium will ever get the sort of attention he deserves at a concert. I fear that he’ll never be a headlining act and that he’ll always be placed as an opening act at a concert where people want to talk, drink, be merry and not pay attention to the beautiful music he’s making. All throughout his set people chatted with their friends instead of listening to the beautiful music he was creating, though, a lot of people shut their noiseholes during the crescendo of “Under The Water It Glowed” because it’s hard not to appreciate how gorgeous that song is.

I loved that he took the stage and did not say a word. He sat up there at his piano and waited for the soundguy to kill the house music, then he just started playing. Between songs he didn’t say anything and I don’t think he even had a microphone. When he finished his last song he just looked up, smiled and waved his hand as if to say “Thanks for listening. Bye.”

During Mono’s set, he walked by my stand, pointed to the mics and smiled at me. I told him “I’ll send you a copy.” and he touched my shoulder lightly and did a scooping head nod (you know, where your head just kind of swoops down with your shoulders). He said “Thanks.” I half expected him to add “…my son” after. He’s just so humble and meak and unassuming and I would pay to see him play everyday of my life if I could.

Eluvium – 2006-06-03 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: eluvium2006-06-03.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: eluvium2006-06-03sample.mp3

Mono is one of my favorite post-rock bands of late. As far as the genre goes, few bands can build a crescendo as beautifully as these four tiny Japanese musicians can. I love how they can draw a song out to a point where you really can’t say when it will be finished, but at the same time you would be completely satisfied if they played the song for hours. At least I would. Because I’m a sucker for post-rock.

Much like Eluvium, the band did not say a word during their set. This may have partly been due to the language barrier but I think it’s more to do with the fact that their music says everything they need it to. Words are for losers and Mono knows this.

Also, I really am not good with their song titles or knowing where the tracksplits are. Sorry. (Update: Thanks to Skim for the song titles. The text file has been updated.)

Mono – 2006-06-03 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: mono2006-06-03.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: mono2006-06-03sample.mp3

I wasn’t too familiar with Pelican’s body of work before the concert but I decided to give them a try. Unfortunately, they bored me to the utmost degree. Their music never seemed to build up to anything. There was no crescendo and no payoff, no big breakdown that made you say “Hell yes I want the world to end.” I think that’s what I like in a lot of instrumental rock bands and Pelican just didn’t do it for me. Every once in a while the guitarist would bust out a really cool little riff or the drum beat would kick into double-bass action and I’d get excited, but those moments were not very frequent.

I will say that upon giving the recording another listen at home, I enjoyed it more than I did last night. Maybe Eluvium and Mono had just tired me out on the whole instrumental rock thing.

Pelican – 2006-06-03 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: pelican2006-06-03.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: pelican2006-06-03sample.mp3

UPDATE: I’m turning off commenting for this entry because the numerous mentions of the word “mono” (you know, like the illness) has drawn the spambots like moths to a disease-ridden flame.

I hadn’t planned on going to this show but Beckah at Suicide Squeeze called and asked if I wanted to be put on the list, and who am I to turn down any sort of free entertainment? No one. That’s who.

The upside of this concert was that a) it was free and b) it was early and I like that because I am turning into an old man. The downside was that, other than Metal Hearts, I had no clue who the other bands were. The downside of the upside is that I actually didn’t get to bed any earlier and the upside of the downside is that the bands I hadn’t heard of were actually pretty cool. I don’t think it can get any more confusing than what I just wrote.

Metal Hearts were the openers so I had to get there early so I didn’t miss anything. I really like this band because they use drum machine tracks without sounding cheesy and they make a concerted effort to incorporate saxaphone into their music. I like me some saxaphone, let me tell you what.

Metal Hearts – 2006-06-01 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: mh2006-06-01.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: mh2006-06-01sample.mp3

After them was William Elliott Whitmore, a solo artist who seems to have been dug up from early twentieth century dustbowl-era America. He sounds like he’s coming at you over an AM radio and thematically bounces from damnation to redemption in all of his bluesy ballads. That he’s not yet thirty years old and a tattooed guy in a fedorah makes it that much more odd to watch. Odd in a good way I mean.

Also, this quote from him during his set cracks me up every time I hear it:

Thursday! Is today Thursday? Right on. ‘Thursday night? Fuck or fight.’ That’s my motto.

The quote is hilarious to me because it could have been any night of the week and that saying would still work. I bet that’s his motto for every day of the week and you know what? That’s a damn fine motto to have. If you’ve gotta hold a motto I suggest you use “[Day of the week] night? Fuck or fight.”

William Elliott Whitmore – 2006-06-01 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: wewhitmore2006-06-01.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: wewhitmore2006-06-01sample.mp3

Once Mr. Whitmore wrapped up, Murder By Death went on. I checked out their MySpace page before I left for the show because I was worried that somehow Metal Hearts had been booked to play with a metal/hardcore band by accident. As it turns out, they just have an unfortunately undescriptive name for their style of music (but they share a name with one of my favorite films ever).

A guy at the show I was talking to described them as “Cursive but harder”. I didn’t find that to be true exactly. I mean, they share some common characteristics with Cursive since they have a cello and all, but I think the similarities stop there. If I were to use other bands to describe Murder By Death, I’d say this:

If Johnny Cash had sons instead of daughters, and then one of those sons ended up writing country songs while hanging out with Nick13 of Tiger Army, he might be the lead singer of Murder By Death.

All in all, I dig their style. Some of the songs seemed like they should have been hookier but they weren’t. I expected them to use a driving snare cadence a lot more than they did… I love country songs that do that (so maybe I just wanted them to do that deep down). Also, the cellist is amazingly proficient at her task and she’s pretty cute too. These are the things I notice.

Murder By Death – 2006-06-01 Neumo’s – Seattle, WA
Download: mbd2006-06-01.akgc1000s.flac16.zip
MP3 Sample: mbd2006-06-01sample.mp3

And now I must admit that I left the show before the last band went on. I had already started tearing down when I realized there was another band coming. At that point, I really had to pee and I just wanted to get home before the rain got worse. If I knew who the band was (I didn’t) or had paid to get into the show (I hadn’t) then I might have stayed, but as it was, I just got the hell out of Dodge.

Eluvium/Mono/Pelican is on Saturday. Now that’s a show to get excited for! Hell yes that show is going to destrory.