More About Music

I have seen a mere nine bands in the past week. I think I already posted about the Deerhoof and Macromantic show, so I will precede to ignore that show.

It's South-by-Southwest time, which means lots of free day shows all over town. Mrs. LaBlog got two afternoons off so that we could go see bands. On Thursday, we tried to catch the M's at Emo's, but we failed by about an hour. That failure led us to Lovejoys, where the beer was free. They also had free fried chicken, but neither the lady nor myself had any. We caught the end of the Manhattan Love Suicides, which was exciting, and the we saw Boat, a band from Seattle and Chicago. Boat was really good. Live, they sound like nine parts Pavement and one part the Unicorns. The album, which we purchased, sounds more like the Unicorns. I would recommend them to anyone who likes lo-fi jangly indie rock. We followed that up by heading back to Emo's for Clem Snide. Clem Snide as a three-piece rock outfit is really confusing. They played new songs, but if you saw the solo tour, then you've heard everything that they played. It was still good, just confusing. There were no suits or ties and only a guitar, bass, and drumset. It's hard to wrap my head around. That was all we saw on Thursday.

Friday was a day spent at Emo's. The Pipettes were the first band of the afternoon. They were very cute and entertaining. To set the stage, there was a backing band of guys wearing matching yellow sweater vests and the three ladies were wearing matching polka-dot dress-type-things. These three cute little English women began singing 60's girl-band inspired pop songs. The music was really good and the girls were entertaining with dances and the like. One of them can even sing well. She's also the cutest of the bunch. A band's sexiness and talent shouldn't be located in the same member. That's just poor planning. Mrs. LaBlog leaned over to me in the middle of their set and pointed out that the could lose the blondes and still be really good. After the Pipettes, we ate fancy grilled cheese at Go Bites. A grilled cheese sandwich with fresh basil and white trouffle oil is pretty exciting. After eating it was back inside where Beach House was playing. They were very nice to listen to. It's very mellow with a nice echo effect on the vocals. They had nice male-female harmonies. After them we listened to Fujijaa and Miyagi. I won't link to them because I really hated their music and don't want to inadvertantly sell a reader on them. We wandered around the club a bit more and decided to listen to Girl Talk. He is a one-man show. It's essentially a dj set with a lot of mixing. His stage presence was intense, but fun. The crowd loved him and for the most part his mixes sounded really good. His last song was a nice segue into the last band of the night by featuring a long clip of a Peter Bjorn and John. Speaking of, Peter Bjorn and John are really good live. The songs sound very similar to the way they do on the album, yet much more raw and energetic. Think of the contrast between Spoon live and Spoon recorded. It's the same but different. Peter Bjorn and John did a nice mix from the first two albums. The bass was a little loud and overpowering, but for the most part it was really good. They might benefit from an extra guitar or keyboard, but that would just muck up the name. Again, they were really good, at a free day show.

And last, the Shout Out Louds have announced a new album. A new song is up on their MySpace page. If you like music, you really should be listening to this band.

UPDATE: For those of you interested, here is a link to pictures of the Emo's day show on Friday.