Islands - Great American Music Hall - 11/9/06

I thought things had changed since last time. For almost the entire show, Nick Diamonds (of Islands) was fun and sweet and very different from the guy who admonished me during the last show. But then towards the end, his true nature came out. After this one outburst, he returned to the lovable facade he had shown for the previous hour, but it felt really hollow after that. We knew he was a good showman, but now it is obvious that he's also a good actor, but can slip out of character from time to time.

Islands started out their show in their matching all-white attire (as per usual).

Nick had his back facing the audience for the first verse of Humans, and when he spun around, you could see that he had a mannequin's head under his head, looking a little like Kuato from Total Recall. He also put a noose around his neck and rolled around on the floor a bit during the song. The theatrics continued after Humans when Nick left the stage to apply white make-up to his face. After that, however, things progressed in a typical fashion. I guess he didn't feel the need to go full tilt towards Of Montreal territory.

Highlights of the show were Where There's A Wish There's A Whalebone, which had Subtitle come on stage to rap, the rubber-band coffee can thing for Jogging Gorgeous Summer, an amazing set closing rendition of (potential song-of-the-year) Rough Gem, and a strong Don't Call Me Whitney, Bobby to start the encore.

The unfortunate aspect of this otherwise rather enjoyable experience was an interaction with a guy in the audience. Some time in the middle of the set, someone yelled out "Jellybones," requesting a Unicorns song. Nick heard this and asked, "Who said 'Jellybones?'" The guy responded by raising his hand and repeating his request. Nick then yelled, "Say 'Jellybones' one more time! I triple-dog dare you!" And when the guy didn't respond, Nick said, "That's what I thought. Now shut the fuck up, motherfucker!" I need to stress that Nick was very serious. I'm glad the guy didn't say anything since Nick seemed a bit unhinged and could have gone Tweedy on him. All I could do is give a knowing look to the kid next to me that I told the story about the time Nick yelled at me.

I don't know what was more disturbing: the immediate reaction to someone who was just requesting a song (imagine if he had requested Freebird!) or the way he went right back to the cucumberesque indie rock frontman. I can only conclude that Nick Diamonds is a dick and maybe a bit unstable. And since Nick reads Jealousy, I just hope he doesn't come after me one day. He should know that I do think his music is amazing and Islands is one of the best bands making music now. Listen to the tracks below. They're all poppy and accessible but still have a great deal of complexity.

Here is the set list from the show. I think when I can, I'll try to grab a picture of the set list for the sake of history.

Islands - Rough Gem

Islands - Abominable Snowman

Islands - Where There's A Wish There's A Whalebone

Voxtrot - Great American Music Hall - 11/4/06

Ramesh, the lead singer of Voxtrot, is stalking me. It started on the 2nd when for about an hour he was yelling at me. Then on the 3rd, he followed me to The Knife's show. Finally, he was at Great American on the 4th, barking at me again. I wasn't expecting him to be at The Knife's show, but I did know that there were going to be two Voxtrot shows in 3 days. Ambitiously, I decided to go to both. Totally check out my my previous review so you don't miss any inside jokes.

Really, having seen them two days earlier, I think all I can do is compare and contrast the two performances, in list form.

Popscene	GAMH
Crowd was young and oh-so indie	Crowd was tall
Set was really short	Set was covered just about everything they play
The sound was typical	The guitars sounded fucking amazing; the best I've heard in a while
Went with Annie	Went with Danielle, Jason, Jon

I think both venues have their pros and cons, but really the intimate setting and short set list of Popscene helped Voxtrot. They just came off better there. But they did sound really good at Great American. So I hesitantly give the nod to the first show.

Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, & Wives

Voxtrot - Trouble

Voxtrot - The Start Of Something

The Knife - Mezzanine - 11/3/06

The Knife is really hyped right now. Elbo.ws shows this duo as one of their hottest artists. And the combination of blog buzz and the fact that they had played a dozen shows ever (and only 1 in America) when they rolled into San Francisco made a ticket to the show more valuable to a hipster than a prenup to Britney.

When I got into the venue, the stage was already set with their various contraptions, and the floor was full of the hippest of hipsters (one guy was dressed like the dude from Thunderdome... I don't remember if he was Master or Blaster). The show itself was the "band" behind a semi-transparent screen wearing Planet of the Apes masks (I think they were actually just ski masks with extra holes) smeared with black-light paint. Various geometric shapes and cartoons were projected onto the screen and also on the wall behind them. As for their playing, I don't know if they actually did any of that. The guy, Olof, had some hot orange drum sticks that he would bang on things occasionally. This might have affected some of the drum beats, but I doubt it. The girl, Karin, moved her mouth with the words. Some times it looked like she was singing, and others it looked like lip-synching.

The think you should know about The Knife is that you can't see anything. The stage is incredibly dark and there's that stupid screen in front of them. And the band (other than a few times when Olof went to town with the fake drumming) just stood there. For all the hype about how amazing the live show is, I don't get it. There were certainly points when the music was really good and the crowd was really into it and there was dancing and I'm sure someone felt it was magical/spiritual/life-changing. Of the people I saw the show with (Jason, Jon, Ian, Aida, Danielle, Amy), some liked the show a lot more than I did. Ultimately, I just felt like it was a DJ set where everyone was looking in the same direction.

The Knife said that they originally didn't tour because they had a hard time making a live version of their music compelling. Well, I think they still need to work on that a bit. But listen to the track below. These guys certainly got something.

The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health

Voxtrot / Love Is All - Popscene - 11/2/06

"Charming" was the theme for the night. Both Voxtrot and Love Is All are quite charismatic and have the ability to win over people who come to their show but don't know their music. Annie and I got to Popscene early enough to watch Love Is All, hearing ahead of time that they put on a kick-ass live show. The studio versions of Love Is All's songs are okay and definitely have merit, but they're not really enjoyable in the normal sense.

Their live act, on the other hand, is quite enjoyable. The staccato yell-sing words over the crowded background of guitars, drums, and sax seems to resonate in your body. Apparently these Swedes have tapped into the alligator portion of our brains. It's difficult not comparing them to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I mean they both have strong female leads with convoluted, noisy, artsy music. Listen to Talk Talk Talk Talk (below) and tell me that you couldn't see the Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing that. In short, despite their harsh sound, they won me over.

Voxtrot didn't need to win me over, they had me at hello. Ramesh is one of the best frontmen around. He makes girls swoon and boys question their sexuality. His playful style and bad dance moves are very enduring. His personality perfectly matches the light and hooky (yet still complex and interesting) music the band plays. The set was short (as all Popscene sets are), but they played enough new stuff to make me have doubts about their full-length debut. Their first two EPs are magical, but Your Biggest Fan seems to be a little too repetitive. I think a good producer could point them in the right direction though.

But don't think that I didn't like their performance. But I've seen them 4 times in the last year (my review from May and I'll have another review up shortly). I want them to evolve, and I think they're trying to move forward, I just think they need a little help.

Voxtrot - Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, & Wives

Voxtrot - Trouble

Voxtrot - The Start Of Something

Love Is All - Talk Talk Talk Talk

Love Is All - Busy Doing Nothing

Beirut - Great American Music Hall - 10/20/06

Damn, Beirut is good. Maybe it's because they are young and haven't been jaded by the constant touring needed to support a fringe indie-rock band, but Beirut is still willing to comply to fans' requests and still enjoy performing. This has been one of the best shows of the past year, with lots of energy, a few surprises, and a crowd that was putty in the muscular hands of Zach Condon and his Orkestar.

When I saw them in Cambridge, MA, back in June, they still had their training wheels on. But now that they're playing places like Great American, and bringing their Eastern-European influenced rock to the masses (by the way, did anyone catch Siki, Siki Baba in Borat?). From adorable Kristen to cracked-out Paul, the band has a lot of personality and it comes through during the performance.

As they pushed through a lot of their album material, they pleased every person around me (and presumably everyone in the place, it felt like I knew about half the people at the show, too many to name). But the reason people will be talking about this show a year from now is that the encores were impromptu, having members jump into the audience. They tried to close the night with their version of Siki, Siki Baba, with half the band in the audience playing trumpets toward the ceiling. But the crowd demanded more. They came back to play one more song, Carousels, and it looked like they wanted to keep playing all night, but Zach proclaimed, "We have no more songs" before leaving the stage for good.

Please buy the album, go to the shows, and tell your friends about Beirut. We need more music and more musicians like this.

Beruit - Mount Wroclai (Idle Days)

Beirut - Postcards From Italy

Beirut - Siki, Siki Baba (live in Cambridge, MA) Read the excellent review at Bradley's Almanac and download the whole set.

The Decemberists - Warfield - 10/19/06

I've seen The Decemberists more than any other band. Or at least I think I have. I've seen them 8 times, give or take. Essentially every time they have come through San Francisco, I've been able to watch Colin and gang. My first Decemberists show was in a cafeteria at UC Santa Cruz. It looked like a high school talent show. Well the beans don't burn on the grill any more for the Decemberists. (As an aside, once on the way out of a Decemberists show, Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, grabbed my ass... or maybe he just bumped into me. But it felt like there was some cupping.)

With a big record contract, the Decemberists got a touring budget that allowed them some Chinese lamps. But really, they seem like they're doing the same-old show, which is good and bad. Other than the really cool grab-someone's-cell-phone-and-sing-to-the-dude-on-the-other-side bit, there really wasn't anything new. And definitely nothing that really grabbed me. Without Petra Haden along for the ride (or Rachel Blumberg beating the skins), I felt like there wasn't as much personality on stage. Or maybe it's just becoming the Colin Meloy show and the rest of the band is taking a back seat.

I'll keep seeing the Decemberists when they pass through (even if it's at a bad venue like the Warfield), even if they're sliding down my live bands ranking. But there is a point when listening to the albums and remembering the shows is enough. I just hope the Decemberists break up or I get old before that happens.

The Decemberists - July! July!

The Decemberists - Shiny

The Decemberists - The Soldiering Life

The Hold Steady - Great American Music Hall - 10/17/06

Originally uploaded by ryanfoley.

People keep calling The Hold Steady a bar band. I think that's a little off. They certainly play blue collar music. But in every one of their songs there's a bridge or a play on words or some other indication that these guys can really write and play music. And that what makes these guys special. They can play the three-chord verse, the three-chord chorus, and then blow you out of the water with some tempo change between them.

At the show, Danielle (who I convinced to go since their new album got a mind-blowing 9.4 at Pitchfork) and I were sandwiched between the sorts of people that would see a bar band. Maybe that isn't clear since you might be thinking these people were drinking alcohol or were wearing leather jackets: the crowd smelled. Really bad. Sex Panther bad. And the crowd was taller than normal. Maybe the two things are related with my nose being closer to the collective armpits and ass of the audience.

The one thing that really came through is that The Hold Steady really enjoy playing live. And they really love their own music. The lead singer's signature move is to sing a line into the microphone then move over to an audience member and re-sing that line directly to him. Kind of in that that-last-line-was-so-fucking-cool-that-I-have-to-say-it-again way. You know the girl at a My Chemical Romance (or similar mall punk music that is prepackaged for angsty tweeners) concert that treats the liner notes like the Bible and thinks the lead singer wrote that song just for her, that's the lead singer about his own band!

For the last song, the band brought a significant portion of the audience up onto the stage with them. Danielle and I stayed back in fear of an even more concentrated odor. The most mind-blowing part of the show was before everyone got up on stage, the guitarist asked a kid in the audience if he could play guitar. The kid said he could and was promptly pulled up on stage and given the guitar. Here's the crazy part: he could actually play! And not just chords, the guy was doing some impressive solos. I've been to plenty of shows where the band will hand someone a tambourine and the chosen one can't even tap out some quarter notes. Having a crowd member playing guitar is like finding out that your toddler can drive a manual-transmission car.

The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend

The Hold Steady - Swish

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - Warfield - 10/13/06

Originally uploaded by ryanfoley.

Is Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! the prototype of how bands operate and music is created in the next decade? Their internet savvy and lack of label (in the US at least) makes you think that this model of self-publishing and promotion might just work. But CYHSY is a different beast than most bands. For starters, they make truly excellent and innovative music. People who like their music are willing to put some effort into finding it. This isn't the model with which Ashlee Simpson could succeed.

But I shouldn't get too involved in the economics of the music industry. I won't stray too far from the formula: concert reviews and bad pictures. I hope you agree that the picture on the side is bad. As for the concert review, I suggest you read my review of the last time I saw them. Having seen them before and feeling conflicted about their live show, I didn't exactly know what to expect. But apparently CYHSY reads Jealousy because this time around they kept the best, high-energy parts of their show and dropped the slow snoozers. Almost every song was fast and that allowed everyone to sway/dance/shake that ass during the show.

The best part of the show had to be the encore where they turned the Christmas lights on and played some favorites. They finished with Satan Said Dance. That really is a great finisher. It isn't anything particularly special other than being a rocker that everyone can sing along to. Putting it in the middle of a set would just be a waste an probably disrupt the flow of said set. But putting it at the end lets you leave the shithouse that is the Warfield with a good taste in your mouth. I didn't take a straw poll, but I think Danielle, Jon, and Jason (who saw the show with me) would agree.

As a postscript, I ponder how a band that owes its success to the internet doesn't have a single song to download on its website.