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I'm behind in my concert reviews, so let me try to get this one out quickly. Back on Thursday June 23, I heard Ringo Deathstarr doing an in-studio performance at KEXP and liked them enough to go catch the show that night at Neumos. (Edit: Actually, their KEXP in-studio was on Wednesday June 22, and then they played the following night. You can hear the in-studio on KEXP's website.) Opening the show was Follow That Bird, and the headlining band was And You Will Know Know Us by the Trail of Dead (hereafter "Trail of Dead"), whom I knew by name but hadn't really heard their music before. I came in late enough that I missed most of Follow That Bird's set. But I liked what I heard of their last song, heavy dark-edged rock, and wished that I'd been on time.
Ringo Deathstarr started out mostly shoegaze, but then they did one that was more '90s indie pop, still heavy, but with cute boy-girl vocals. They were a bit like the Raveonettes that way, just with a different era of pop. Later they had a song with a lovely ethereal guitar introduction, dreampop style. And another tune reminded me of Mistle Thrush's late work; I could totally imagine Valerie Forgione singing over it (not that Ringo Deathstarr's own singers were bad). They finished with yet another stylistic tweak, as Follow That Bird joined them for a raucous punk rock affair. I was definitely digging their music, my only complaint being that I wanted some of their songs to be longer, and I picked up their album, Colour Trip.
...Trail of Dead turned out to be pure hard rock, driven by rhythm guitar, lacking the intricate guitar solos often associated with the better-known branches of heavy metal. That's not to say that their music was simplistic, but I still wanted to describe it as old-school somehow—not particularly '70s-sounding, yet it had that kind of pure heaviness, and definitely a metal edge to it. They had a relatively small but ardent crowd rocking out to it, heads banging and arms flailing. It really was not my thing; the music was all right but didn't make me want to rock out the way most everyone else was. I do have to say the artwork for their latest album, Tao of the Dead, was fantastic and made me want a copy, but I couldn't justify picking up the LP just for that.
I have a set of photos from this show up on Flickr; the Ringo Deathstarr ones are unfortunately on the dark side, but the Trail of Dead ones are fairly good.
Ringo Deathstarr started out mostly shoegaze, but then they did one that was more '90s indie pop, still heavy, but with cute boy-girl vocals. They were a bit like the Raveonettes that way, just with a different era of pop. Later they had a song with a lovely ethereal guitar introduction, dreampop style. And another tune reminded me of Mistle Thrush's late work; I could totally imagine Valerie Forgione singing over it (not that Ringo Deathstarr's own singers were bad). They finished with yet another stylistic tweak, as Follow That Bird joined them for a raucous punk rock affair. I was definitely digging their music, my only complaint being that I wanted some of their songs to be longer, and I picked up their album, Colour Trip.
...Trail of Dead turned out to be pure hard rock, driven by rhythm guitar, lacking the intricate guitar solos often associated with the better-known branches of heavy metal. That's not to say that their music was simplistic, but I still wanted to describe it as old-school somehow—not particularly '70s-sounding, yet it had that kind of pure heaviness, and definitely a metal edge to it. They had a relatively small but ardent crowd rocking out to it, heads banging and arms flailing. It really was not my thing; the music was all right but didn't make me want to rock out the way most everyone else was. I do have to say the artwork for their latest album, Tao of the Dead, was fantastic and made me want a copy, but I couldn't justify picking up the LP just for that.
I have a set of photos from this show up on Flickr; the Ringo Deathstarr ones are unfortunately on the dark side, but the Trail of Dead ones are fairly good.
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