Better late than never, I hope. Allow me to review a show I attended last week (02.20.07) : Grizzly Bear, Papercuts, and Foreign Born.
Foreign Born are out of LA and it was hard not to be continuously aware of it. They had a decent sound but it was amazingly produced for the first band. They sounded somewhat like The Killers or, as I put it, a wussier Arcade Fire. (side note: I am now informed that the new Arcade Fire may be edging perilously closer to sounding like The Killers) At any rate they were decent but did not strike me as being terribly memorable. None of their songs managed to pull me in and the relatively constant tempo would dull my awareness of them. By far their best song was the last one where they doubled the number of people on stage and added more percussion and a small harp.
Final evaluation: I would not pay to see them but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear them on Live 105.
Papercuts are a San Francisco product. They were recently written up by the SF Weekly in a solid review and I agree with its sentiments overall. If you have to use one made up musical adjective to describe them it would be that they are Dylan-esque. The lead singer seems to playing to his own musical vision; whenever he is not singing he turns away from the audience to immerse himself in the sound. The other aspect that I found very interesting is that I thought the music had an almost “raspy†quality to it that I thought came from the keyboards more than the vocals. Papercuts are definitely a band that is doing its own thing and doing it well.
Final Evaluation: I would probably not pay to see them – but purely for stylistic reasons.
Grizzly Bear are from Brooklyn. They were the headliners for the show and play much smoother style of rock’n’roll. The lead singer has a very melodic voice for indie rock and uses it well. They alternated from these almost ‘drone’ pieces to songs that were a little more up-tempo. I definitely liked the up-tempo ones better and, I confess, almost fell asleep through part of the final sequence that they had. They had a pretty low-key drummer for most of their songs and I thought that was one of the more usual components for a lot of their songs. It is nice, and a little challenging, to get out there without the constant thud of the bass drum and it definitely helped bring out their unique timbre. I hadn’t really heard much of their stuff previously and I think I would be curious to do it again now that I am a more informed listener.
Final evaluation: I would pay to see them again ($8) but not enough based on their current popularity.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
I am inclined to think that all these music posts are an attempt to top the Matt Priest episode.
March 5th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Also, you are implying that these bands are somehow related to Aasimo? Do they also have an affinity for falling down stairs while singing happily?