Last night I went to a local indie rock show because my friend Jason plays in the headlining band Mouthful Of Snow, who also happened to be releasing their debut CD at the show. It was only $3 for 4 bands I have never seen live or really even heard before plus you get the new CD for price of entry, so it was a definite go for me. Unfortunately the show went on later than expected and since I had driven a few people to the show with me that needed to get home for work in the morning I ended up missing my homie's set and therefore there is no review of Mouthful Of Snow here although this was kinda their show. I can, however, say that the CD they released, called "The Truth Hurts, But You Would Still Like to Hear It," is really really good, like a cross between The Cure and Tokyo Police Club at times with acoustic flourishes on some of the songs. Really solid emo-indie.
The show was being held in a warehouse that I guess is used as a practice space to pay the rent or something. I didn't really get what they did there but it was a cool place with good acoustics and a clean, working bathroom. Good stuff for a small-scale venue. Behind the bands was a brown door that stood out in the white background and for some reason I got kind of a cabin or schoolroom feel. It was a cool place.
The first band that played went on around 7:45 or so and thats when me and all my friends shuffled into the place. They were called The Wild Complete, but during their set the singer guy announced that they 'had gone through alot of member changes as The Wild Complete' and basically said they were changing their name to Real Diamond. I don't feel like either name really sticks out too well or fits them any better than the other but I do like Real Diamond more than The Wild Complete just aesthetically, so there's that. The music was really good modern indie rock, again I'm gonna throw in the Tokyo Police Club reference because I think its apt here, but they also had like a Vampire Weekend rythmic thing going on too. I hate to just compare them to other well-known bands but I only mean the best by these references. They all had a good amount of energy and they had good tempo changes going on throughout the set that didnt seem jarring, just interesting. They were really fun all the way through, if a little generically "indie" by today's standards of the phrase. Sarah even remarked as much when I brought up the thought that they kinda sounded like Vampire Weekend, she just said something along the lines of "Well yeah, they were indie!" There once was a time when indie meant a whole different set of sounds but this is the world we live in. All in all Real Diamond, or Wild Complete, or whatever they're called, they were really good. And when I went to clarify their name they complimented my Minutemen shirt so you know they got good taste.
It took a long time in between each band. A long time. Maybe time was just standing still for me and my friends, but I usually can't get through a whole beer in between bands I usually have to rush through the second half of the can because I can hear the next band's set beginning. Tonight it was like I was finishing beers and then still waiting 20 minutes. Long set-up times are one of my top pet peeves so that sucked, but it wore down my friends even more, all of whom left after the second band except the homie Brian who I had driven there. We just sat in that parking lot for too damn long.
The second band was not very good, really. After taking forever to set up they 'sound-checked' a chorus from one of their songs like 5 fucking times and kept messing with the sound on the 3 mics they were using and I dunno it was just way too much "check check check check" on the mics for like 10 minutes. That kind of shit really gets on my nerves and this band did it worse than I've seen it done in a very long time. Just the fact that they played a 30 second chorus from a song they later buried in their set sooooo many damn times pissed me off, it seemed like they were gonna play but they stopped playing and it was fucking lame. So they were off to a bad start with me.
The band was called Calling Home (if the flyer is correct, I couldn't understand what the singer guy said when he announced everything) and really they weren't horrible and I can imagine hearing their recorded output and enjoying it. But live this band is not very good. For one the singing is sub-par high-pitched stuff thats not too far off the mark but just enough to be annoying sometimes. Thats not to say that the guy was a shitty singer, I think maybe he couldn't hear himself or something and also he's playing guitar, but it just wasn't all together vocally. The music was slow-paced emo-rock in the vein of Sunny Day Real Estate, The Get Up Kids, Knapsack, Mineral...those are all bands I really, really like and to be honest might not even be bands that the members of Calling Home realize they are sounding like, but they're just not hitting it the way those bands do. My old friend Taryn used to tell me she thought that Sunny Day Real Estate's classic emo album "Diary" was boring, and I would get all pissed. But after watching this band I realize how boring this kind of trudging emo-rock can really be. Its good recorded but goddamn boring live. They just played too slow and their songs went on waaaayyy too long...I like the kind of style they play but I did not like them this particular night.
Also, during Calling Home's set there was some real faggy (sorry) looking kid who started going all stupid for one of their quasi-breakdowns and straight up poured like half a Monster energy drink on his head like that was something cool to do. He wasn't even dancing he was just like spazzing out and acting a goddamn fool when this wasn't even a part to be doing anything to, it was like a fucking Get Up Kids slow part or something. Lol.
During this boring-ass band's set is when most of my friends left so after they were done me and Brian just hung out by my car and talked kinda awkwardly even though we've known each other forever. We were just both waiting to get out of there, really, because it had already taken so long for this crappy emo band to finish and we were tired. He had gotten up to help with carwork at 8am and I got up earlier than I would have to go on an Encinitas trip with the Gravitys crew. Plus he had to be up early for work in the morning so the constantly deepening time silently made an issue of itself.
Finally we finished our last beers and started to hear noise from the warehouse like they were in the midst of getting the sound levels right. We went in and the place was pretty empty so we went up to the front area and leaned on the wall there so we could actually see this performance as opposed to being obstructed by kids in the front the whole time.
The band didn't take too long testing their sound and didn't do something ridiculous like playing a chorus 5 times to check how everything sounded like the band before. The singer/guitarist guy had like a really tight T-shirt on and a wacky hairstyle so it made me think they were gonna be lame prog-emo or something but that wasn't the case at all. They were called The Wicked Willows, and they played a sort of hard psychedelic rock with lots and lots of energy in the performance. In particular their bassist was wailing like a madman, not only playing really tasty licks and having a really heavy tone and chunk coming out of his speaker but also rocking out in good fashion. They were each really good at their respective instruments, although the guitarist opted to play random muted strum strokes at times when clearly there should have been chords or something there, but it actually works for the high-energy performance they put on. At times they reminded me of a psychedelic CCR, or a super-rambunctious falling apart at the seams version of The Strokes, or a less kitchy more powerful version of The Black Lips. Each song they played was really good and they really rocked the house, I'd love to see the Wicked Willows again. They had a good vibe going on in between songs as they talked and drank beers, they seemed like cool dudes.
After their set was done I had to go tell the homie Jason that I wouldn't be staying for his set because I was taking Brian home, but he didn't seem too distraught or anything and I'll be able to catch one of their shows soon anyway. Mouthful Of Snow's CD was really good and I'm sure they can get cool shows.
We drove home, I dropped off Brian, and was much more tired than I realized when I got home. It had been a long day of not doing anything.
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