Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Starting over...
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
New Videos
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Switching It Up
Friday, September 3, 2010
MGMT
Nobody should really expect MGMT to be profound or complex. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they aren’t good live, but I decided to decide for myself and scored seventh row center tickets to the show.
The band came out and opened with Flash Delirium, which in my opinion was easily one of the best tracks on this year’s album. As it was also the first single, it was relatively well received. The audience had been pretty quiet throughout the set of openers Violens, and leading off the set with a popular song, rather than one of the more abstract ones, really set the pace and got everyone on their feet. Staying true to character, they strayed from convention by playing “Destrokk” next, which I had never actually heard before. As it turns out, it’s a song from the Time to Pretend EP that came out way back in 2005, before I had ever heard of the band. While they played it well and I enjoyed it, I got the feeling that a lot of people were in my situation and didn’t recognize it. It may have killed the vibe a little. But they picked it right back up and started blazing through older hits like “Electric Feel,” “The Youth,” and “Time To Pretend,” as well as newer highlights “Brian Eno” and “Song For Dan Treacy.” The lights stayed pretty dim most of the show, with dark blue lights prevailing over most other colors. The cool, dark vibe was helped by the strange tie-dye and kaleidoscope-like designs flashing on the screens behind the band. After throwing in a seemingly-random cover of The Modern Lovers’ “Roadrunner,” (Yeah, I haven’t heard of them either,) they finished strongly, although predictably, with “Kids.” As you may imagine, “Kids” got the best reaction, with the entire crowd dancing and jumping and singing along as loudly as possible. While the band had tried to stay straight-faced and serious for the majority of the show, they came out of their collective shell for this one. Laughing and jumping around and just having as much fun with it as possible, which I actually thought was a little strange. I would’ve thought that they would be sick of playing it, since it is their most popular song, and they seemed to stray away from making pop songs on the second album, like they didn’t want to be famous. Either way, it was definitely the highlight of the night. It almost felt unnecessary for them to come out for a subdued 3-song encore, ending the concert the same way they ended their new album, with “Congratulations.”
I wasn’t blown away, to be honest. But I didn’t want to be. I understand why people say that they are bad live, but I disagree. I think it’s all about perspective. But even though they take their music in new and very different directions than most popular bands, I still don’t think they are really all that complex. You go to let loose, get lost in the layers of their music, and just have fun. Dance your ass off. While the show wasn’t anything groundbreaking, it was still a great time, which is what you should expect from these guys.Monday, August 2, 2010
Arcade Fire
The openers, Young Galaxy, were alright. Some songs were good, and I might check out their albums since it seemed like they'd be the kind of stuff that would sound better all mastered and whatnot.
Arcade Fire came out and played for a little over an hour and a half. The set was awesome (see videos below). I love their music, but didn't know too much about them, so it was surprising to see 8 people on stage, all switching instruments every song. Some members switched between violin-piano, or drums-guitar-keyboards. It was kind of awesome seeing how talented they all are, even though they seem like a pretty odd bunch of people. Especially Regine, who does this weird ballerina-robot dance the whole time, and although she sings great, when she tried to speak in between songs (introducing Sprawl II) she sounded like she was either coked out or half retarded.
Regardless, the most impressive thing, to me, was how much energy and passion they put into playing these songs. It's amazing how mellow you would think some of the songs are, particularly off of Funeral, but somehow they just go nuts and jump around and rock out playing them, without taking anything away from the song. With no audio, you'd think they were playing something more upbeat and hardcore-sounding the whole time. It was great to watch.
They opened with Ready To Start, which works really well as an opener, and warmed up the crowd well. What surprised me is how they stepped into high-gear right away with "Month of May" second, which is probably the fastest, most upbeat song that they have. They just absolutely destroyed it (in a good way). It was great live, and basically let everyone know that they weren't messing around, they were gonna give us a hell of a show. About two-thirds of the way through, after playing "Deep Blue", I thought it was funny that Win said "sorry for confusing you with all of these new songs", as if almost everyone there hadn't been listening to the album for the last week straight. We were all singing along to almost every song. Of the last 6 songs after that point, including the 2 in the encore, the only new one was "Half Light II" (which sounded great live). The other five were perfect, fan-favorite placements that had everyone going nuts the whole time. "Keep the Car Running" sounded particularly spectacular live, from a vocal standpoint, while the seamless transition from "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" into "Rebellion (Lies)" was really spine-tingling. And, while predictable, finishing with "Wake Up" just works perfectly, with everyone shouting the chorus at the top of their lungs. I think the only song that gave me chills to sing along with live more than "Wake Up" was "Hey Jude" when I saw Paul McCartney about a year ago at Fenway Park.
Check out the stage set-up in this video. A "billboard" screen, streetlight post, and the back screen looked like they were under a highway overpass. Really went all out with the suburbs theme, but it was awesome. The video sums it up pretty well, even if the audio is a little off (i didnt take it).
