Updated Thu., 3/5

Alright, so some quick thoughts about last night’s Whigs / Dead Confederate extravaganza.

(1) Dear lord are Dead Confederate loud. My ears are still buzzing a bit today. Been a while since that’s happened. But they’re totally worth it. They’re one of the few bands out there that makes me feel the same way about music that I did when I was 17 or 18 (and it’s not because of the too-numerous Kurt Cobain comparisons) — a mixture of excitement due to the subtle, complex catchiness of their songs and a real sense of darkness and danger that really doesn’t exist in today’s indie landscape. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the folky, singer-songwritery aspect of a lot of current indie. But every once in a while it’s nice to remember that rock and roll is supposed to have an edge.

(2) I think The Whigs picked up some things from touring with Kings of Leon, not all of them good. They’re clearly getting comfortable with being headliners to larger crowds (I’d guess there were 300+ or so people there last night), and the news songs they played showed a willingness to branch out into a more textured sound. That said, I only really liked one of the three new songs I heard, with the other two sounding very… Kings of Leon-ish.

And while they’re more comfortable with bigger rooms, I’m not convinced that their sound (at least their original, scruffy, garage-y sound) fits too well in a bigger venue. I moved around to a few places during their set last night and couldn’t find a single place where I liked the sound. Maybe it was just last night, but it sounds like they’ve turned down Parker’s guitar, and as a result his vocals are higher in the mix but are way too echoey. I fell in love with these guys because their live show had incredible balls to it, but those balls weren’t nearly as big last night.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love ‘em, but this was the first show I’ve seen from them that didn’t kick my ass. Hope it was a one-time affair, and not an intentional attempt to make their sound a bit more mass-consumption friendly.

(3) My early excitement over Trances Arc while listening to their MySpace page yesterday was a tad premature. They’re certainly a tight, talented crew, but something about them felt way too calculated. Their songs were big-sounding but without any real character, and while all the members seemed talented at their individual pieces, it just didn’t add up to anything compelling to me. Oh well.

Dead Confederate




The Whigs