vandervelde battles battles

For quite some time I'd been pondering tonight's show choice... David Vandervelde at the Hi-Dive or Battles at the Larimer Lounge? Dilemma, dilemma. Truthfully, I'd been leaning toward Vandervelde for a while. While the new Battles album has been receiving rave reviews from both critics and online friends of mine, I've only listened to it a couple of times and have apparently just not "gotten" it yet. Which is not to say that Vandervelde made me sit up and take notice immediately... It took me several listens to start appreciating The Moonstation House Band. When the moment of truth arrived, I had to go Vandervelde.

I had a good night tonight. First was dinner at Laura & Leah's. Laura had taken a Thai cooking class and invited a bunch of us wine night girls over to test out her new skills. The menu went like this:

Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce
Coconut Soup (Tom Kha Kai) (vegetarian)
Green Papaya Salad (vegetarian)
Shrimp with Green Curry
Vegetables with Red Curry (vegetarian)
Coconut Lime Sorbet with Mangos (vegetarian)

It was delicious. Leave it to the Asians to have plenty of vegetarian options!! The party timing couldn't have been better either, as everyone started heading out around 9:00. I hung out just long enough to put my Hi-Dive arrival time at just after 9:30 and just in time to catch (most of) the opening act. Oh, and also tonight I met up with Mark, a last.fm friend of mine. It's not the first time I've met an internet buddy at a show, but it's been a while. And I have to say it was really nice to have someone to talk to. Since I've got all of one friend in town who has my taste in music (well, OK, maybe one and a half - I have been to several shows with Laura... lol), I've just grown accustomed to attending shows by myself. And to his credit, Mark is the one who definitively convinced to me to see Vandy instead of Battles... But anyway... when I got to the venue there was one dude on stage with an acoustic guitar. I was confused. I had been under the impression that local band Mothership was opening, then Jonathan Byerley, then Vandervelde. I was mistaken as it was Jonathan Byerley (also local, which I found out just now) playing when I arrived. He didn't leave much of an impression, though I did like him. Pretty mellow.

Then Mothership. Here is, verbatim, what I wrote about them after I saw them open for The Besnard Lakes and Dirty On Purpose a few months back:

Opening up the whole evening was local band Mothership. They were... adept. The crowd loved them, but they were just too "jammy" for my tastes, and all the songs started to sound the same. Which is not to say they were without bells and whistles (literally). Adam alternated guitar, whistling, baritone sax and this odd black box with an antenna that made noises when he moved his hands near it. Noises that kind of sounded like a... mothership. Those are all technical terms, too, I swear! Brian had a cool Star Wars guitar. Brendon alternated guitar and trumpet. It sounds like it should all add up to something spectacular, but it just didn't hit me the right way I guess. I did enjoy the last song of the set, though - called Ida Lee - about leaving earth in a homemade spaceship in 2012 (or 2013, I can't remember the exact date...). Awesome.

Yup, that's pretty much how it went tonight, except that they DIDN'T play Ida Lee, making tonight's set pretty damn disappointing. I still can't understand how a band who plays harmonica, trumpet, theremin (found out what this was in the meantime... lol), bongos, and sleigh bells can bore me so much. It's a mystery.

Finally, David Vandervelde. He played 4 new songs, solo, before his bass player joined him onstage. He apologized for not having the whole band with him, but it seems Richie is in Tennessee... "He got rich without me. He invented deep fried ranch balls for TGI Fridays". I spent a few moments trying to imagine what, exactly, a deep fried ranch ball is. It sounds really gross, but then, so did deep fried mac n' cheese at one point in my life. But I know now that deep fried mac n' cheese is the shit... especially after several hours of St. Patty's Day drinking.... mmm hmm. I was impressed with Vandervelde. It was a very short set - after his 4 solo songs they played a Phil Ochs cover, then Murder In Michigan and Feet Of A Liar. Very short, but very very very good. The biggest hurdle I encountered with The Moonstation House Band was David's voice. It grated on me for quite a while, but seeing him live... I enjoy his singing SO much more in the live setting than on the disc.

One last note - and something I seem to be dealing with a lot lately - the crowd tonight was extraordinarily sparse. I don't like to think of myself as a complainer, but I may have to rethink that... :) I complain about sold out shows, I complain about tiny crowds... No pleasing me I guess. I just hate to see an artist that I really like and respect have to play to a handful of people... that's when sets get shortened and bands don't want to come back to Denver. On the plus side, though, Vandervelde is all of, what - 22, 23? So when the rest of the world catches on to his talent, I'll be all "Yeah, I remember when I saw Vandy at the Hi-Dive back in '07 with, oh... about 30 other people. It was fantastic."

those pesky canadians

Montreal seems to be a real hotbed for indie rock these days. A couple of weeks ago I saw French-Canadians Malajube open for Snowden and completely blow them away in the process. Tonight were The Besnard Lakes doing much the same to Brooklyn's Dirty On Purpose.

There are so many reasons to like The Besnard Lakes: they seem to be very nice people - Jace was among the crowd for the first act, and even helped them get their gear off the stage; canadian accents (even poking fun at themselves a bit with outbursts like "take off, eh?" and "total fuckin' beaut!"); smoke machines; and, let's face it, they totally fucking rock! I feel awfully fortunate to have seen them at the Hi-Dive with probably about 100 other people for their first Denver show. This band is hot hot hot right now, and will likely only get hotter. Tonight they played:

Rides The Rails
Devastation
For Agent 13
On Bedford And Grand
Because Tonight
Disaster
And You Lied To Me

Dirty On Purpose took the stage to a far smaller crowd than had been there for The Besnard Lakes. Which is too bad - despite being a bit upstaged by the Canadians, they did play a nice set. However, they were not quite as good tonight as I'd hoped. I fell completely in love with last year's album Hallelujah Sirens, and tonight's set fell just short of my expectations. The vocals were mixed pretty low and hard to hear, and the band just didn't seem as tight as they could have been. Which is not to say they aren't fun... Joe mentioned that he'd been watching Dancing With The Stars downstairs and decided that he could win. Then we got to see his Michael Jackson moves. I've never seen DWTS, but I'd vote for him. :) With two songs left things started breaking down... Joe broke a string and had to use one of The Besnard Lakes' guitars. Then there was some problem with the bass. But at least we got a joke out of it: How did the pig get to the hospital? In the hambulance. Yeah, groan, I know. Their set (partially, anyway - don't have it all worked out yet and I'm damn tired):

?
?
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Monument
Your Summer Dress
Ways To Drown
Fake Lakes
Car No Driver

Opening up the whole evening was local band Mothership. They were... adept. The crowd loved them, but they were just too "jammy" for my tastes, and all the songs started to sound the same. Which is not to say they were without bells and whistles (literally). Adam alternated guitar, whistling, baritone sax and this odd black box with an antenna that made noises when he moved his hands near it. Noises that kind of sounded like a... mothership. Those are all technical terms, too, I swear! Brian had a cool Star Wars guitar. Brendon alternated guitar and trumpet. It sounds like it should all add up to something spectacular, but it just didn't hit me the right way I guess. I did enjoy the last song of the set, though - called Ida Lee - about leaving earth in a homemade spaceship in 2012 (or 2013, I can't remember the exact date...). Awesome.