My parents were at this show. This was a little weird to me. I never saw them save for one passing glance, but I think my impressions may be slightly colored by the disturbing specter I felt knowing that somewhere in the crowd of somewhere close to 10,000 people lurked those that spawned me.
This whole show had a certain unsettling vibe, actually. The people around me at the front were just bizarre, reckless, irresponsible people and almost ruined everything. Honestly, every time I write a review I am tempted to go off about how people are so lame at shows, and pose the question, “How do such horrible people like good music?” But really, these people were just obnoxious and rude, and it seemed like a lot of them had never been to a rock’n'roll show before. People were throwing up devil horns and crowd surfing constantly (seriously, more people crowd surfed at this show than at the Warped Tour last summer). I guess this is the typical listenership of the 96.5 the Buzz, a radio station that becomes more irritating by the minute, and these days, probably the typical Modest Mouse fans. That Lazlo dude came out and gave lame introductions and was every bit the tool you would expect him to be if you have ever listened to his “show.” But goddammit, I love Modest Mouse, or I used to, and I still do love some of their music, and I was willing to spend $30 and endure lame people and a crappy venue to see them live again.
Love as Laughter kicked off the super rad party. I’d never heard them before. They played some good, honest pop songs — I could dig it. To be honest, I wasn’t paying that much attention, but I didn’t mind them at all, and they seemed like some pretty cool dudes.
Band of Horses played a pretty righteous set. They emulated the whole spacious vibe and layered sound of Everything All The Time beautifully, and played a decent amount of material from their upcoming Cease to Begin. They were pretty down to earth and very gracious, although they seemed a little out of place at a big outdoor show; I’d really like to see them at a club sometime. I’m sure all the cool kids loved toking up to “Weed Party,” hah hah hah.
Modest Mouse, well, they weren’t as good as when I saw them at the Uptown in ‘05. But there is a good chance that is only because I am much more jaded and less impressed by the idea of live music. There was, however, a marked difference in their performance. They still play with a hard enough edge, but their sound bore the same polish that We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank had, making a lot of songs, namely those from their two newest albums, slightly boring. They simply can’t function the same as they did as a trio back in the day, leading to an over-rehearsed, overly glossy delivery, the live equivalent of the irritating backbeats which plagued We Were Dead. Seriously, “Little Motel” and “Fire It Up” were even more painful live than on the album, and that’s hard to do; the former is truly cringe-inducing and embarassing, and the latter is just pure bubblegum shit. And most of the excessive cuts from Good News (seriously, I would have thought they were touring for this album instead of their new one) fell flat, except “Bury Me With It” and “Black Cadillacs,” which are both pretty decent songs.
I probably sound like I didn’t like the show and that isn’t true. Hearing some of my favorite songs ever made me uncontrollably happy. “Doin’ the Cockroach” was loud and intense and had a really sweet jam added to it — these possibly improvised bits made the show for me, and gave me hope for the band’s future. Same deal for “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes;” the new arrangement with Marr really brought out a lot of what’s great about the song, and transformed it into a lengthy industrial epic, complete with slam dancing and several drunken fights in the crowd. “Out of Gas,” one of my favorite songs, followed it. They played “Paper Thin Walls” early in the set, which was fun, although nowhere near as great as when they played it in their encore the first time I saw them. However, their encore this time around probably surpassed it; it consisted of “Spitting Venom,” probably the best song from the new album, followed by a really, really great jam/medley which included a lot of pieces from Ugly Casanova songs and some from “I Came As A Rat.” Watching Jeremiah Green and Joe Plummer weave these really interesting and complex drum patterns was really a pleasure to watch. Which leads me to the conclusion that they need to stop trying to condense their talents into small packages and embrace their sprawling, jammy tendencies. But what the fuck do I know.
My parents loved the show. They loved it. But my dad was confused about why Isaac Brock was standing on the side of the stage, because he couldn’t see him. And they thought the guy in Band of Horses was very polite.
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