New direction = keyboards and drum machines LOL
On Saturday, Jess, Josie, Josh and I went to see Brand New at the Congress Theatre. It was an... interesting night.
When we arrived, the queue of people waiting to get in snaked down the alley at the side of the venue and back out, all the way down the street. Conservative estimates put the crowd at 99% frequent patrons of Hot Topic, 1% people who through no fault of their own find catchy guitar music appealing.
I was (or at least felt like) the oldest person at the venue who was not...
a) A member of staff
b) A member of one of the bands
The Congress Theatre itself, in direct contrast to the Chicago Theatre the night before, is an absolute shithole. It was clearly once a great theatre, but now it was barely cleaner than a squat with everything in complete disrepair. The toilets had no soap, no toilet paper... heck, they barely had doors. Call me a girl, but I have basic standards of hygiene.
As for the main auditorium itself, though, it was a marked improvement over the Chicago Theatre in that you could sit on the balcony without the rapid onset of vertigo; and as old man-like as sitting at a gig is, I did not want to be stood amongst all the annoying little brats.
The first band on stage were mewithoutYou. I had seen them before, supporting Coheed & Cambria, and despite their ridiculous stage behaviour enjoyed them. On record, they are fucking great:
Sadly, they got more ridiculous since I last saw them - frontman Aaron Weiss is an unkempt, dirty meth smoking version of Michael Stipe, with all the comedy "dancing" that entails. It was unwatchable, and the muddy sound of the venue meant I could barely enjoy the musical side of it either.
The second band on stage were Thrice, another band I had seen supporting Coheed & Cambria. Their claim to fame is that they are one of the loudest bands around, and this is true... but Jess and Josie both surmised that the volume is to mask how fucking bland their music is. I don't know how you'd describe their sound without using the E word... well, other than "OH BROOOOOOTHER!".
The title of this post is actually inspired by Thrice. You see, they have a forthcoming album that is split between two sides. Fire is their usual fare - loud guitars with emo vocals, but Water (in predictable "guitar band experiments with their sound" shocker), features keyboards, drum machines and vocoders. And to really drive this point home, when playing songs from Fire, the lights were all reds and oranges; and when playing from Water, the lights were all bue and white. How clever!
For some reason, they were on stage for around an hour or so. About 59 minutes and 59 seconds too long.
Finally, a few beers worse for wear and utterly bored by Thrice, Brand New came on stage. Unlike the three Js, I am not a massive fan of Brand New, owning only one album. I actually enjoyed them a lot, especially when they played the two songs I like most by them - 'Millstone' and 'Sic Transit Gloria... Glory Fades' (named after a quote from Rushmore, one of my favourite movies):
Naturally, being the headliner, they felt they had to out-ridiculous the first two bands, and they managed this with aplomb.
First, there was the setup. There were two drumkits on stage (the second played on a handful of songs by a roadie), as well as a giant bass drum that their lead guitarist hit about five times on one song. Then on a couple of songs they had two people playing bass at once. On further songs, there were multiple guitarists. I believe on one song, they had two drummers, four guitarists and a bassist... or three guitarists and two bassists. It sounded great and all, but for the most part, their core four members could have coped just fine on their own.
Then there was the liberal use of a device Jess and I saw on stage only the night before - the sampler. Their idea of an encore was for the lead guitarist to come out and record a few phrases into the sampler, the singer/guitarist to add a couple more, then for them all to play over the top of it before shuffling off stage again. I mean, it sounded cool, but they dragged it out longer than necessary, and the three Js were still waiting for them to play material from their first album.
Overall, it wasn't a terrible night, but it certainly didn't compare to the genius of Andrew Bird the night before.
