Wednesday, June 29, 2005

10

It looks like I've topped out at 10 shows for June. From my earlier list I added Kathleen Edwards but missed the Colorstore show on Friday to hang out with friends and the Architecture in Helsinki due to camping. Then there's the Rogue Wave/Helio Sequence show tonight... and Warped Tour going on right now... but I'm not going to go. I need to catch up on laundry, miscellaneous nonsense and, most importantly, sleep. And blogging.

Enon were OK, I'm not terribly familiar but they played enough stuff I recognized for that not to be the problem. Toko's keys monitor wasn't working so after the first three songs she played bass and didn't sing lead at all, which cuts down on their variety. Better, however, were the opening bands, Sparrow, from Vancouver, and Thunderbirds Are Now! from Detroit. The latter were upset (well) that Detroit had just lost to the Spurs but they lit the place up. They had not played Phoenix before and asked the crowd how many knew their music; I knew who they were but hadn't heard their music. Now I own both CDs they had for sale.

Last night marked the Moutain Goats return to Modified. Darnielle played an odd set, including fewer songs from The Sunset Tree than I expected - no "This Year", for example. This is due to the shortish set (only about 45 minutes) but it also made room for other tracks such as The Color in Your Cheeks... which I had assumed that I'd never hear live. There were other older songs I didn't recognize (such as "The Recognition Scene which somehow I knew was from Sweeden) and a pair of mellow songs from Tallahassee - the title track and Game Shows Touch Our Lives. The 4 or 5 unrecognized songs, rather than alienated me, impressed upon me even more forcefully how great of a songwriter John Darnielle is. I own his last four proper albums; I need to just keep going.

The first band to play was Tierra del Fuego, who played the Colorstore/Goodbye Blue Monday show at the Emerald Lounge. They are a local band that has only started playing though the members are from established locals including Rum Tenor and ...And Guppies Eat Their Young so they're not like a band just starting out. I tried to google their name... and got nothing of value even including "Phoenix." I added "Rum Tenor" and my blog was the second hit. Anyway, enough of this... they have an alt-country type sound and some fantastic songs. I'm looking forward to catching them again.

The second band was the Double from New York. I'm not sure how to describe them but were stellar. Very experimental, noisy guitar. The synths and the general sound made me think of Suicide (though one should not read too much into that.) I need to listen to their CD (their next one is due out on Matador in September) and see what I can say there.

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