Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Monday Recap: Anti Monday League

If you didn't make it to the Casbah last night, you are almost forgiven because it was butt ass cold, but you missed a decent show.

Evervess was on first. Eric of Swim Party is a member of this band. If you're into shoegaze, Evervess is for you. I had flashbacks of high school and loving bands like Ride and Swervedriver which is pretty fitting since they are the first two bands listed as their influences on their MySpace page here. Grinding guitars and one of the biggest drumkits I've seen any local band use with the dreamlike singing of both guitarists and the bassist coupled with the lighting effect of projected liquid and I was back in 1991, and for me that was a good thing. Troy Johnson commented to me that the 90's are coming back, and I say better than the fucking 80s. Just don't start pulling out your flannels...

Talkdemonic was the second act onstage. The crowd increased...I guess everyone is accustomed to shows starting later. Keep in mind the Mondays start a bit earlier. The smoking patio was particularly empty due to the cold and everyone huddled inside to watch the experimental pair from Portland do their thing. The band is Lisa Molinaro on violin and Kevin O'Connor on drums, accompanied by a laptop (gasp!) with prerecorded accompaniment, such as bass, guitar and mandolin. This is an all instrumental pair and they played a long set of electro-acoustic and electro-classical music. They played a relatively long set and seemed to hold most of the crowd well.

Last up for the night was Dreamtiger. I've never seen them before and I really am not into slamming bands, but I really felt the vocals were weak. It was unfortunate, too, because any band with a chick on accordion would naturally appeal to me, but the vocals just didn't match the music for me. And it had nothing to do with volume or sound mixing...some people just shouldn't sing. Being that it was 11:45, I left during the 3rd song.

I raced home and arrived just in time for the repeat of "The Hills" season premiere on MTV which prominently featured Greg Laswell's cover of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" during the closing montage of the show. Good work, Greg.

2 comments:

sharon van etten said...

that is so nice. thank you. it means a lot.

evervess drummer said...

thanks for the great review and kind words. john, evervess