« Home | See what I mean? » | It's sweetness that I'm thinking of » | Genius of love » | Losing my head » | Dreaming of gold and cocaine » | Epic panegyrics » | Good weekend » | "That room is fucking evil." » | Conceptual whiplash » | We are so happy to have you join the team! » 

Sunday, July 01, 2007 

This is not a joke so please stop smiling

I guess the moral is you probably shouldn't go to see a band who's last record you hate and second last record you don't care about. Don't get me wrong, Wilco were good enough live - the two-song stretch where we got an incredible "Via Chicago" complete with irruptions of noise followed by a very sweet "Jesus, Etc." was good enough that if they'd kept up that pace I would have been a convert, and I quite liked Nels Cline the entire show. But they massacred "Sunken Treasure" as an opener (I like it when bands change up songs live - but when they remove everything good from a song, they have to put something else good in, or it sinks) and then followed up with two crap new songs, and I thought I was doomed until they launched into a fine, burning "A Shot in the Arm." Of course, I was really there to see someone else, so it was worth it, and that alone was a weird sensation. I don't hate all of Sky Blue Sky, not quite; over multiple listens at work, "Either Way" has been revealed as a fine, supple if low-key song that I really like. Everything else sucks, though.

It's kind of weird to have the climax of your concert going night at about 8:40, but that's what happens when you go for the opener. I'll give Kicking Television a listen, and I'd love to hear this lineup of the band tackle the whole of Summerteeth, but put me down in the not impressed column.

I enjoy A Ghost Is Born, having bought it on the strength of their performance at Glastonbury in 2004 - but for me they're one of those bands who garner an incomprensibly large amount of critical acclaim and fan adulation. Not heard anything from Sky Blue Sky, and you're not exactly selling it to me either!

Pure Phase, on the other hand, I'm already sold on - if mainly because of 'Medication'. In the midst of 'Electric Phase' as I type, in fact... Thanks again.

Post a Comment


Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

About me

Ian Mathers is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Stylus, the Village Voice, Resident Advisor, PopMatters, and elsewhere. He does stuff and it magically appears here.

Contact Me:
imathers at gmail dot com

My profile
Powered by Blogger
and Blogger Templates