Wednesday Night: Beauty Bar: The New Black

It's nice to see things picking up midweek in San Diego. There were so many good options last night: Kite Flying Society at House of Blues, The Burning of Rome at the Sports Club, and of course, Sparklehorse and Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. All good, but KFS I'll see next week, SDSC is the last place I wanna be, and the Belly Up show was $17 buckaroos. So naturally I opted for the $6 show at the Beauty Bar with Scissors for Lefty and The Colour's CD release.

Before that, I should mention, I hung out with three friends at the Ken Club until they realized that there was a new episode of Lost starting. Fortunately, Matt called and wanted to go somewhere so we headed to the BB together. I really wish I had responded to the guestlist postings earlier in the week. Lesson learned.

The bar was far less crowded than I expected. Scissors for Lefty was already performing. Immediately I thought they sounded like The Cloud Room who, in turn, are probably compared to New Order and Joy Division. The male singer did some vocal effect that is what I imagine a woman faking pleasure during coitus would sound like, I mean, if i ever faked. (mwahaha.)





It actually sounded cool in the first song, but he kept coming back to it and using it in every song which I thought was overkill. Still, while some of the crowd might have lost interest, most did not, especially the girl who was dancing like she learned her moves from an iPod commercial. At one point, the singer jumped off stage and sang to various girls in the crowd who were digging it for sure. I liked the use of the alternate mic, maybe from a cb radio?



All in all, I thought it was a good set, and if I'd realized the band was from out of town, I might've picked up a CD or two. Again, I have to give props for another band with great merch. Two styles of shirts, both very unique and not like regular merch you see every band around truck around with them.

The Colour came on after a short stage turnover. I thought their show last night was really good and I'm glad I saw them again. Sometimes what happens when I'm out now is that my friends know I'll be blogging about a show, so they tell me how crappy they think a band is or on the opposite token, how good they are. It's cool to hear other peoples opinions but when I start adopting other people's opinions is when I should just stop writing.

That said, the Colour is on Rethink/EMI, but were originally with Monarchy, and their style is very much in the same vein as Delta Spirit and Cold War Kids...Matt thought one of the guys from Delta Spirit was playing with them, but I'm not sure that was him. I say bring it...more bands need to have bells and maracas in their music. In fact, I'll be joining Vinyl Radio* as the official bell and maraca shaker. I might even throw in the requisite cowbell.

So the Colour played a full set and the Red Sparrow Crew apparently opened and the band kept giving them shout outs, and they were selling a mix tape at the merch table. The singer of The Colour looks a little cheesy at times, maybe too pretty, or maybe his cheeks are naturally that defined, but there's something that makes their slower ballads feel a little disingenuous. On the other hand, when they rock, they rock, and it was a nice way to spend a Wednesday night: good friend, good bands, good booze, close to home, and home by midnight.

See you all at the Casbah tonight.

*I forgot to write my disclaimer that I'm not really joining Vinyl Radio. You'll probably see it in CityBeat's Locals Only page next week anyway, but it isn't so. I was joking.