05/03/2009

upstarts comedown

since nobody ended up writing anything about the last show at the sando, i figured i'd jump in and write out somthing for last night's spectrum show here. first, the set list so i remember it when i get around to filling out apra forms:

an invitation
but i lose myself
the quest for love aboard the belafonte
for the manifesto dub
this is the new thing
nothing ventured
the separation


i thought it was a fairly bizarre bill for us to be included on. i quite enjoyed the other two bands, but i don't know that everything really went together. i particularly enjoyed marquee who's shoegaze stuff reminded me very much of what i used to do in my youth. i was impressed by their drummer, who avoided the temptation that drummers in that type of band fall into of covering the music with a wash of cymbal white noise. when they do that, you can't hear the intricacies of what the guitars are doing, because it all happens in the same part of the sound spectrum. but he only used his cymbals to accentuate, not to create noise, and the clarity because of it was great. i thought they could do with more vocal melodicism to go with the guitar melodicism, but that criticism aside, i really liked them. particles were bleach-era nirvana (even down to the guitarist/singer's dress aesthetic - completely anachronistic for 2009, but quietly nostalgic for myself), which i've always had a soft spot for (and another throw-back to my youth - am i so old that the sounds of my youth are no longer part of the continuum so are able to be brought back and sound 'new'?). i bought their demo cd ($2 !) and it's actually really well recorded and the songs come across really well.

as for our set, it was loud, which made singing difficult (well, hearing the singing, to be more specific) but, otherwise, i thought we did reasonably well. there weren't any glaring issues. manifesto was excellent - proved we could make as much noise as any guitar/drum band, which we kind of needed to do in the context of last night. the new arrangement for the separation is infinitely better, once we get the autoharp back to accentuate where it does i think it will be close to complete.

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