Interesting night out last night around the D. Sure, it was Valentine's Day, so the crowds weren't exactly huge, but there were certainly plenty of movers and shakers about town. Met this guy, this gal, this guy, this guy and a few others. Hit three venues. Saw five bands.
Instrumental act Shibboleth was in week two of its month-long artists-in-residence stint at Club Dada. Each Thursday this month they'll be performing the scores of Ennio Morricone. Pretty entertaining stuff--especially the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. And they didn't even have their drummer there last night, so next week and the week after, when he's promised to be there, should be even more interesting listens...
Shoegazers Pet Hospital followed Shibboleth at Dada. Very Ben Gibbard-y stuff from this young group--kinda blew me away, actually, even though the band did seem to have a couple timing miscues. The high notes aren't quite there yet for the vocalist, but that will come with time/practice/perfomance experience. Very promising stuff there. Oh, and they were giving away free copies of their catchy little EP Dirty Bones at the show. So that was a nice...
(More after the jump.)
A few doors down, I stopped into The Prophet Bar to see what had become of the hallowed Gypsy Tea Room. Seeing that I never really, y'know, attended a show at the Gypsy Tea Room, it's tough to say how things have changed. The space is beautiful, and so is the ballroom, which I got a tour of from Joel, the manager. Too bad they're ripping the bar out of the big room. And too bad they have too much of a penchant for booking Christianity-centric acts. The look on Joel's face when I told him the backstory on Schoolyard Heroes was pretty classic, though...
Stuck around a bit and caught Icarus Crane and Little Rock's Bear Colony there. Icarus Crane's instrumentals got repetitive after a few songs, but improved substantially when the non-drumming member switched from the keys to electric guitar. Meanwhile, Bear Colony (whose LP We Came Here To Die is something of a delight) was pretty awesome. The band's set was a little more rocked out than its recorded tracks would imply--a good thing--helping them, oddly enough, evoke mental images of an all-male, less epic and less, um, shiny Shiny Toy Guns...
Closer to home and later in the night, I saw Spivey at The Cavern. Maybe I woulda been more into this electro-jam duo with Roger Clyne-meets-Bono vocals if it were playing to a bigger crowd (there was next to no one at The Cavern; it was like a private show), but I just wasn't really feeling it. I give them tons of credit for the fact that they played a reported three-hour set, but while listening to them, I couldn't shake this image from my head:
Not that there's anything wrong with that, I guess. -- Pete Freedman
