by Kat
Thursday night I didn't get to bed until 2AM-- and *not* because I was playing WoW.
After a stressful day at work finishing up an RFP, I met with the office's Women's Book Club at Brouwer's Cafe in Fremont to discuss Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. While I was there I picked up an issue of last week's Stranger, thinking it was the Seattle Weekly. I couldn't find any of my theater reviews in it, of course, so I stupidly realized I had the wrong publication, but I DID see an ad for a Stranger-sponsored concert for a band I really like,
The Album Leaf. I was just saying to the book club ladies that I'd have to go see it when I realized that they were playing at nine PM that night. Whoops. Way to be pre-informed, Kat.
Justin and I already had plans to go to Joanna's Soul Cafe for dinner and another performance of
365 Plays/365 Days with Tom & Amy, the couple we met in GNP this year. So we set out to do that, and ate okra and jambalaya and drank mint juleps with them for a while, then headed over to
Chop Suey, a cute little Capitol Hill venue, to check out the concert.
When we got there at 9pm, I was kinda peeved to see that The Album Leaf didn't actually take the stage until 11:30, which meant we'd get home waaaaaaay past my bedtime. But since their music is chill, and the price was right at $12 a head, we decided to chance the opening bands and wait for them to play their set. The opening band,
the lymbyc system sounded a like Album Leaf but maybe a little more mellow. And it was only two dudes playing a billion instruments (electronic and non-) so they were pretty impressive. The drummer was the head-bangingist drummer I've ever seen. They played a good set, then
Dirty on Purpose took the stage. I'd never heard of either opening band and it was neat to widen my horizons beyond the more conventional music I often listen to. DoP's set wasn't as clean as lymbyc system's but I think I'd like them a lot if I heard some of their studio tracks. Having never heard their vocals before, I found them really hard to understand because of the obscene volume and feedback in the small club space. Why do bands play so loud? I never understood it... the louder they play, the shittier they sound. It seems like the return diminishes pretty fast.
Anyway, Dirty on Purpose was made up of four cute hipster dudes. I met the drummer at the swag table before their set and he flirted with me with his eyes, though I didn't know it was him. One of the guitarists was hilariously emotive and totally into playing. He flailed about the stage in such a way that it made me realize that watching someone play the guitar from the waist up looks an awful lot like watching them give themselves "hand relief." During the last song, he actually threw himself on the floor, knocking over a microphone stand, and wailed away pretty much in the front row. We were sitting on stools in the back, which mean we couldn't see what he was doing down there, but I imagine I would have found it amusing.
The Album Leaf didn't take the stage until almost 11:45, which these days is about when I fall asleep so I can get my ass to the gym at 6am. How sad, no? I don't know much about the band except that I like their music (pirated from Micah) and listen to it a lot. I can't even really say what genre they are, because I haven't really heard much music like theirs before. It's sort of ambient electronic-instrumental with rock undertones. Very chill. If you're a fan of Explosions in the Sky, you'll like Album Leaf.
They were great live, though definitely a group that's more fun to listen to than to watch. They sounded really awesome but in doing so, mostly just sat there. Unlike, say, Tori Amos, who puts on an incredible show pretty much having hot sex with three pianos on stage. By 1AM, we were ready to head home, but the crowd insisted they play an encore-- which they did, for another 20 minutes. I stuck around to try and get an event poster because they looked really sweet, but apparently everyone else had gotten the same idea because they were all gone.
I crawled into bed a 2AM, completely burned out, and didn't get up until 8:40 Friday morning. The great thing about living so close to work is that after showering and packing up, I still managed to get to the office at about 9:15. I guess I can have a social life after all!
Posted on November 18, 2006 @ 11:51 AM |
0 comments
