Fangirls On The Road, Day Five : Toad's Place, New Haven, 3/10/09 + more new songs.

What a weird venue. For those who haven't gone to Toad's Place in New Haven before, the venue space is split in two by a barrier (complete with barrier guards), one side for the over-21s and the other for the unders. I suppose the whole idea is to prevent under-21s from drinking, but I heard that they had the same set up BEFORE they got shut down for a few years due to underage drinking. So I guess the moral of the story is that you really can't stop underage Yalies, after all. (We were also treated to witnessing an irrationally irate guy arguing that his under-21 girlfriend should be allowed to exit and reenter the venue so they could get "pizza." Clearly this kid doesn't go to too many shows, or he'd realise that not allowing underage kids to reenter is standard procedure pretty much everywhere nowadays.)

Anyway, notes on the show itself are pretty short - nothing new to report, other than the fact that I got a plum spot sitting on the edge of the stage, and thus didn't have to elbow people away from my spot.

So, let's look at the rest of those new songs, shall we?


"Last Leaf"

In my post about the kick-off show in Philly, I noted that this cache of songs seems overwhelmingly more emotional than last time around, and this song is a prime example of that. Witness Damian Kulash doing something he's never done before and singing a totally earnest love song on stage. On acoustic. All by himself. At the TLA show, in fact, he introduced this song by more or less pleading with the rest of the band to keep it on the new record. (We were later assured that it will be recorded, but I think it would fare better as a hidden track or a b-side, to be honest.) It was an endearing moment; it has to take a lot of guts to stand in front of a crowd and beseech the other guys onstage to keep a song because it means that much to you.

Unfortunately, Damian's introduction to the song changed from "Please? Guys?" to "I'm a sarcastic asshole blah blah here's me playing a song" pretty rapidly, which ruined the charm somewhat. It's an incredibly sweet, simple effort nonetheless. Oh, and here's an amusing video of him messing up about halfway through (around 1:20) at the Northampton show:




"This Too Shall Pass"

Rachel decided early on that this was her favourite of the new stuff (and while I like it a bunch, I'm pretty partial to the funk of "White Knuckles"). Recklessly joyful, it's the anthem for all those times you've second guessed yourself or let someone else get the best of your happiness. My band director always used to tell us, "This, too, shall pass," and that's all I can think of when I hear this song. Wise words, indeed.


"Skyscrapers"

Until it was pointed out to me as otherwise, I swore the first line of this song was "Stop screaming screaming screaming" (It's not. It's "Skyscrapers, please forgive me."), and I wanted to say, "Damian, please never take your own advice." (But I can't say that now, because that's not what the lyrics are. I am half-deaf in one ear, please be quiet.) The falsetto and accompanying screaming that kicks in about three-quarters of the way through the song harken back to the OK Go-before-they-were-OK Go tracks of Appendices and, most recently, their cover of the Pixies' "Gigantic." The whole old-influences-and-sounds-coming-full-circle thing is something I thoroughly enjoy and hope they continue to pursue. This song was one you really had to see in Philly; that night's performance (being the one in the video above) was the best. (Portland's was excellent but marred by the introduction of an echo, which did the song no favours. Drop the technology, boys, and let the vocals do all the work.)

ETA : Also. If you watch that video, start paying attention to the tubular bells right around 1:55. Suddenly, at 2:00, they'll be conspicuously missing and then suddenly reappear again five or ten seconds later. At that point, Andy Ross broke the gavel he was using while playing, which was hilarious, because he just stared at it like, "...what the fuck?" And then we laughed. Loudly.

A few more pictures from New Haven can be found here.

Fangirls On The Road, Day Three : MHoW, Brooklyn, 3/8/09

Credit to Rachel.






Credit to Rachel.

So while the rest of the blogosphere is updating the who, what, when, and where of SXSW, I'll just sit here, at home, in Jersey, and write about a tour that happened a week ago. No, I'm not jealous of any of you at all.

Of all the shows I was going, the New York date at MHoW was the most-anticipated, with the probably exception of Boston. Unfortunately, OK Go's performance was a notch below the two nights prior - something you wouldn't have noticed had you not been present at those other shows. But being as that was my case, it was a slight disappointment. Oppenheimer and Longwave were spot-on as usual, in any case, and guitarist Shannon Ferguson was back onstage with the latter, affording us an opportunity to yell, "WELCOME BACK, SHANNON" as obnoxiously as possible. Making the frontman laugh into the microphone from the balcony is an accomplishment.

Oh, Damian talked smack about me onstage. Witness:



And it was Andy Ross' 30th birthday, which meant the inevitable sing-along:





And, of course, the best line of the night:
"PLAY IT AGAIN!" - random dude
"Did you just yell 'play it again'? I have been heckled in my day, but I have never heard someone yell 'play it again' before." - Damian

Day four will feature the rest of those new songs I talked about last time, so hold tight. More photos (all like, five of them) can be found here.

Fangirls On The Road, Day Two : OK Go at the Recher Theatre, Towson, 3/7/09 + some new songs, part one.

Credit to Rachel.




I don't like confetti.


Emily, your dad's here.*

OK Go's set (and Longwave's and Oppenheimer's as well) at the Recher Theatre ran pretty much as it had the night before in Philly, minus a lot of the silly mistakes the headliners had made on opening night. With the added bonuses of having an even younger audience than the night before AND having an INCREDIBLY drunk girl (along with her equally drunk boyfriend) in attendance who took it upon herself to yell "FUCK PHILADELPHIA, WELCOME TO TOWSON" at every opportunity that presented itself, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the room. Also, despite being a small place (and my Small Venue Snobbery is well documented**), the Recher Theatre kinda', well. Sucks. In a "this lighting isn't terribly good" and "you can't get a glass of water" extortionist sort of way.

That being said, the energy was way up during this show, and I think it was the best performance of the week, given the freshness of the material and the fact that the Touring Bug hadn't seem to settle it quite yet. After the show, frontman Damian admitted that the band had gotten all of their other influences out during their first two records, and all that was left was Prince, and that while OK Go was never really an angsty band, record number three (tentatively titled Help Is On The Way***) looks be even less so than the first two.

So, speaking of this new stuff I keep going on about, let's look at some of the new material.

"Shooting The Moon" - The perpetual opener featured Tim on a big bass drum, Damian on acoustic, and the band jamming away in a lovely outro which is unfortunately missing in this totally acoustic video (courtesy of "Intern Joe" at WMMR Philly). (Also, embedding is disabled, so you're just going to have to be unlazy and click the link yourself.)


"White Knuckles"
This might be my favourite of the new stuff. Honestly. After they played this at the TLA, Damian asked, "Can you tell we've been listening to Prince?" Yes, Damian.




"I Want U So Bad"
This song makes me weak in the knees. (And I thought I was past the weak-in-the-knees phase. Guess not.) The bridge pretty much does it. The second vid is of better quality, although, tragically, only a clip.


"Back From Katmandu"
We've gotten a taste of this song before; here it is in all its live glory. Also, cowbell + double-necked, double-stringed guitar with capo on seven? Interesting.

More new stuff in the next post, otherwise you wouldn't want to read them.

More photos (although a rather tiny amount) can be found here.


*Midway through OK Go's set, the venue made an announcement to the tune of, "Emily so-and-so, please report to the front of the venue." The entire band stopped and looked around, completely stunned, with Damian asking, "Did they just make that announcement in the middle of our set...? In case you didn't catch that, Emily, your dad's here."

**Actual conversation that occurred during the course of the week:
"Are you one of those girls who, as soon as a band gets big, you don't listen to them anymore?"
"No, I just don't see why I'd want to see a band with 4,999 other people when I can see you with 399 other people."

***Or so I've heard, but I can't for the life of me find the link...

Fangirls On The Road, Day One : OK Go at the TLA, Philly, 3/6/09

Hello, all (those of you that are reading this, anyway). Again, sorry for the lack of serious posts - I've been superlazy as of late about actually sitting down and listening/paying attention to stuff.

Anyway, don't really expect any "serious" updates for the next week or so, either. My friend Rachel and I are currently embarking on what she likes to call a "fangirly roadtrip extravaganza!" and I'm just calling "we're following OK Go around on their tour for a week." Yessir, we are.


Your guides, Katy and Rachel.

So for the next seven days or so, expect updates from up and down the east coast as we follow those former-treadmill kids as they get their bums back onstage with some new songs (finally).

Day One : Philly

Let's meet our players.




Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer are from Ireland, or so I've heard (and their accent pretty much confirms that). I've actually wanted to write about these dudes for a while, as I saw them open for TMBG at the TLA over a year ago and was really taken by their set, but obviously that didn't happen. I will do that eventually, once I get to hear them a few times and pick up their record. Suffice to say that they were adorable onstage, with poppy, short songs (which is good, as I generally have the attention span of a gnat), filled with robot-voiced synthesizers and broken drum sticks and an airhorn solo. (Yes, an airhorn solo.) I'm excited to see these guys several times over; I think the crowd, mainly made up of pubescent girls, appreciated them.


Longwave

I've met various members of Longwave at varying points in time, but have never actually seen the band live. They were short guitarist Shannon, because, as frontman Steve put it, "He's going to be a daddy any second now." Aww. Friend Keith joined them on guitar as well. A much slower, more rock-oriented set than the one before, I'm not sure it caught on quite as well with the teenies and fangirls, but Steve is wicked adorable and I sort of just want to hug him a lot for that.







OK Go

I've written about OK Go several times before, about how I was super-into them a few years ago and now, not so much, partly because, I dunno', I maybe grew up a bit, partly 'cause I was a little bored. Ya' know, the usual. A band you love doesn't do anything new for a while, and you start to move on to greener pastures.

I think I'm sort of in love with them again. It was patently the opening night of the tour, with mistakes like frontman Damian fucking up the lyrics to his own songs and one Andy Ross breaking the gavel to his tubular bells. There were also a whole bunch of new instruments and gimmicks, such as the aforementioned bells, a large bass drum, handbells (poorest technique ever, but I was in handbell choir in college, so I appreciated it), and a double-necked guitar. And it was sort of difficult to determine where in the set we were - is this the middle? The end? The fake end? The encore? What's going on next? They were trying everything out, so. Understandable.

All of that aside, the new cache of songs sounds phenomenal. Somebody's been listening to Prince a lot, I can tell you that. But more than that, they are somehow much more...emotional. Damian, God bless him, seems to have turned down the "sexy rockstar" thing a bit in favour of a more humanised version of himself, something which, judging by the solo love song he played (and pleaded with his bandmates to keep on the record), seems to have a lot to do with being married for going on three years now. And that's refreshing and interesting to see. Bringing in a whole new set of odd instruments can seem gimmicky and then just pretentious if not done right (indeed, I said to Rachel, "If none of this works out, I'm gonna' laugh." Sorry, lads.), but they did play them right, in the right amounts, for the right songs at the right times. That takes planning and thinking.

Also, I'm definitely past the "droool" phase, but man, if that "I want you so bad I can't breathe" song didn't make me fucking weak in the knees.

So am I excited? Yes. Very. It's a step in a very good direction for them, and I'm eager to see how the rest of this test run goes. Fingers crossed for them.


More pictures are here.