Pilcrow

Picking up with the archive concerts, on October 4, 2009, I went to Chop Suey to see Asobi Seksu. Although they seemed to be advertised as the headliners for the show, they were actually sandwiched in the middle, with Anna Ternheim opening and Loney Dear closing. Amusingly, the KEXP blogger who did cover this show was there to see Loney Dear, and didn't really know Asobi Seksu at all. Anna Ternheim was a moody singer-songwriter type, who played a short set of four songs backed by Loney Dear's four-piece band, and one more by herself. She had a nice voice, and came across like Emilíana Torrini. Asobi Seksu were good as always; in my notes I called out the coolness of lead singer Yuki Chikudate's clear vocals soaring dreampop-style over the grittier shoegaze-style guitars. They finished with the long "Red Sea", with its extended freestyle drum solo by Chikudate, and the house DJ made a nice segue from that into the Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be Adored". Loney Dear was also a singer-songwriter, though less moody and more in the style of John Vanderslice's alterna-pop/art rock; occasionally his music reminded me of Annuals, too. He had a big orchestral sound and neat arrangements to his songs, making interesting use of percussion, drums, and synth elements. He had good control of the audience, not only getting them to sing backup on one song, but also getting even the loud talkers back at the bar to quiet down simply by playing another song unamped, with a tiny bit of accompanying keyboards and backing vocals. That was a very good show and I enjoyed it a lot.

The Asobi Seksu show was on a Sunday; I bookended the week with more shoegaze-influenced music by going to Neumos on Saturday October 10 to see School of Seven Bells, with the Depreciation Guild and Warpaint opening. My note-taking at shows had already become sporadic by this one, so I don't have a lot useful to say about the show. Warpaint had a fairly bare-bones dreampop/mood rock sound that I liked a lot, but at the time I felt they needed some more hooks, some more development in their sound; I thought their last song of the set, "Crimson", was the strongest and definitely headed in the right direction. I did like them enough to buy their EP Exquisite Corpse, and I've really liked the songs I've heard from this year's full-length release The Fool, which is on my list to buy. The Depreciation Guild were more straight-up shoegaze, with that ringing guitar sound that instantly makes me smile. Although they didn't seem to offer anything really new, they had a good solid sound that was very catchy and enjoyable. Ironically, I kind of forgot about them, so that when KEXP started playing songs off their new album Spirit Youth this year, I kept saying "wait, who is this?" Finally, this was my second time seeing School of Seven Bells, after being amazed by their Sasquatch Music Festival performance, and they continued to deliver a great set of music with a little space rock, a little glam, a little goth, and lots of shoegaze. I feel I should mention that I didn't have song names down yet, so my notes say they played an extra-dancey version of "(ba da dahh, ba da di da…)", which stumped me just now until I checked a couple of the songs; as soon as I started playing "Chain" I said ah yes, that was it. 

I don't have any notes for my third and fourth shows of the month. The third was a house show at the New Crompton on October 15 and featured my friend Jackson Tegu with his subversively-titled project Google Maps, which was as much performance art as music, featuring a lot of audience interaction and fun activity sheets. It was kind of silly but fun. There were two other acts, Overcome by the Power of Love and Letters, but I don't recall much about them. For the fourth show, I volunteered to staff the KEXP info table at the Moore Theatre on October 16 for Grizzly Bear, with The Morning Benders opening. The KEXP table was out in the lobby, so I did not see most of the show. So many people were still arriving during the Morning Benders' set, not bothering to check them out, that I also didn't get to really hear any of their music. Even during Grizzly Bear's set, for a while there were several people standing out in the lobby talking, and I wondered why anyone would bother to spend the money on the show if they weren't going to watch and listen. I did get to slip away to watch a song or two, they had a cool stage setup with bright white lights like candles all around, and I wish I could've seen the whole thing. Still, I had seen them at Sasquatch and I did get to hear most of the show, so it wasn't a big loss. 

Finally, for my last show in October 2009, I went to the High Dive on Friday the 23rd to check out Spanish for 100, a band featuring my occasional KEXP boss Aaron Starkey on guitar (edit: oops, not bass), along with Stereo Sons opening and Shim closing. Once again, I didn't take any notes beyond putting down the band names. I don't remember anything about Stereo Sons at all, and I'm not even sure how much of their set I saw, I may have missed most or all of it. I know I liked Spanish for 100, and not just because I know Aaron, but I can't recall anything in particular from that show to say about them; I do want to see them again, though. I do remember that Shim had a strong late-'70s hard rock vibe, complete with smoke machine and guitarists striking dramatic poses on the edge of the stage when playing solos; they weren't quite my type of music, but they did put on a fun show. 

And that was October 2009. I have some photo sets on Flickr for the Asobi Seksu show, for the School of Seven Bells show, and even for Jackson Tegu's Google Maps show, but not the other two.

Wednesday evening I went to the Moore Theatre to see They Might Be Giants. Neither the Moore's website nor any of the concert calendars I'd looked at listed an opening act for this show. However, promptly at show time, two members of local band Harvey Danger appeared on stage to do a short opening act.

Vocalist Sean Nelson and pianist/guitarist Jeff Lin of Harvey Danger played a half-hour set of their songs, including "Carlotta Valdez", "Little Round Mirrors", and "Pike St./Park Slope". Nelson's strong voice and Lin's spare accompaniment worked well with the theater's acoustics, creating very affecting renditions of the songs. I hadn't really listened to Harvey Danger's songs that closely before, and was surprised to recognize most of them. The stripped-down versions made it easy to appreciate the intelligence of the lyrics, and gave me a new appreciation for their songs. Although it was understandable that they would not play their biggest hit, the anthemic "Flagpole Sitta", it would've been interesting to hear it reinterpreted by the duo in this setting. I enjoyed the set and, realizing that their usual full-band sound will be different, am still interested in hearing more of their music.

( Harvey Danger photo )

They Might Be Giants - as if you didn't know - are the duo of John Flansburgh (guitar and vocals) and John Linnell (keyboard, accordian and vocals), with Dan Miller on guitar, Danny Weinkauf on bass, and Marty Beller on drums. They played a rocking set of songs that spanned their career from their first, self-titled, album to their most recent release, The Else. This was an interesting show for me because I haven't been keeping up with their releases and only know a couple of the songs they've released in the 2000s, so about a third of the set was new to me. Among the newer songs that I enjoyed were "Experimental Film" and "Damn Good Times" from The Spine, and "The Mesopotamians" from The Else. The show's first half also featured "Doctor Worm" (with confetti cannons), "She's an Angel", and "Twisting".

( TMBG lineup )

The first part of the show had a few odd bits, such as a "phone calls from the dead" segment in which Flansburgh, offstage, "called in" as "Richard Milhouse Sagan," brother of "famous Washingtonian" Carl Sagan (not actually from Washington), and sang a couple verses of "Swing on a Star" (by Bing Crosby, actually from Washington) with Linnell. The stage banter also felt a bit stilted at times, as though they weren't quite sure of themselves. However, the waves of love rolling in from the audience loosened them up, and they gave back as much love as they got. Early on they urged everyone to come stand in the aisles as close as possible, and asked with sincere concern whether the security was discouraging such behavior; fortunately the theater staff were very tolerant (indeed, they seemed remarkably good-spirited for this show). At one point TMBG instigated the crowd in the aisles to form conga lines out of the theater and back in, before going into "No One Knows My Plan".

Although the first half of the show did have some rocking songs, I felt the show really kicked into high gear in the first encore, when they brought out a horn section* on trombone, trumpet and saxophone. The horns really enhanced their sound and I was surprised they reserved them for only half the show. Standouts in the second half included "Particle Man", "She's Actual Size", and "Memo to Human Resources", which featured solos from each of the horns. For the true encore of the show, the three horn players came out front to do an extended introduction to "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", and the song brought down the house. Overall, this was not the best TMBG show I've seen, but it was still a great time.

*Edit: since writing this review, I've learned that the horn section was The Velcro Horns West, including Jim Honeyman on tenor sax, Dan Levine on trombone, and Bill Dowling on trumpet.

( TMBG with horn section )