Sunday, November 18, 2007

Friday Recap, Pt 1: Manchester Orchestra @ Epicentre

I hadn't been to the Epicentre in quite sometime. People complain about it all the time, but I don't really get why. If I was 16 and wanted to go to a show, I'd probably be at the Epicentre every weekend, no matter who was playing. And, when I was that age, if my ears weren't ringing for the next two days after a show, well, it must not have been that good. At 31 and with the help of my little $10 earlove earplugs, I was just fine with the show. I didn't quite take into consideration that the show would start quite so early, however, so when I got there a little after 9, I only caught one song by The Annuals. I got the setlist, but Lyn posted it, so go check it out there, along with her photos.

I was lucky that Manchester Orchestra and The Annuals are coheadlining, because they alternate who closes the show, and since I was there to see Manchester Orchestra, I was lucky they were last. While there weren't a ton of people at the show, the young crowd was concentrated up front, so I didn't take any photos of the show. However, I noticed a girl taking pics and video, so after the show I introduced myself and asked if she'd be willing to share her pics. She kindly agreed.

Here are some of Jessica's photos. You can see more in the photo album section of her MySpace page.












The band sounded great live. We were in the back and Pyles compared the singer to Jim James, for me there was a little Chris Corraba and they kinda reminded me of this SD band called Waiting for Autumn that I saw once a few years back. The music was quiet and haunting and then would build to these all out screamers with the whole band banging and clanging their instruments. The band played for over an hour, playing most of the tracks from their album I'm like a Virgin Losing a Child. Or maybe every single one? I'm not really sure.

What was funny though was what happened to me the next day. I was driving and going through my iPod and settled on Neutral Milk Hotel. I have never listened to the band but have them on my iPod. Yeah, figure that one out on your own. Anyway, a song comes on, and it occurs to me that this song was the song The Manchester Orchestra opened their show with..."Oh Comely". There were several times in the night when every instrument was silent, save for Andy's voice, and at times he even pulled away from the mic and just sang. He closed the show with a song incorporating "turn out the lights, the party's over" that sounded really cool.

The show was over by 10:30 so I headed off to destination two for the night.

1 comment:

Lazy John said...

I'm glad the Epicentre exists. Kudos to Dave Proulx and company (BTW, Dave is on our high school academy's advisory board, so he's multifaceted). Many of my students get to see cool bands they'd otherwise never get to see because of the Epicentre. We did not have such a place when I was in high school. Keep up the great work!