It's awfully tricky to get to live shows when one lives in a veritable cultural wasteland, but we make the effort from time to time, and this was one of those times. The Resident Photographer and I trekked up to Orlando recently for a two-night stand with some of our latest favorite and enduring favorite and entirely new favorite bands. Night one was Frightened Rabbit, fronted by Scott Hutchison, pictured below:
Like many, I fell madly in love with Frightened Rabbit's sophomore album, The Midnight Organ Fight, last year (I'm pretty sure Andy Whitman at Paste Magazine can be blamed for that, click through and read #5 on his personal list of top albums of 2008), and, recognizing that this may be the peak of the band's career, especially after picking up their somewhat less than stunning initial offering Sings the Greys, I felt it was imperative to get up there and see them NOW, and boy did it pay off. The live renditions of songs that I have grown to love were filled with even more passion and fire than the studio tracks. (This should always be true, but it is not always true.)
The Social proved to be an excellent venue, with nary a bad seat in the house. Even when occupying prized real estate at the bar, I was only ten rows away from the stage. I counted.
Opening for Frightened Rabbit were label-mates the Twilight Sad. I had read some recent buzz about them, and was excited to see them, but ultimately, they were not really my bag. I remember seeing Mogwai in the late '90's and being somewhat underwhelmed - I recognize that it's not them, it's me - and the Twilight Sad certainly falls into that post-Shoegaze, Mogwai-born category.
Opening for the Twilight Sad were label-mates We Were Promised Jetpacks. I found them to be a little rough around the edges, but The Resident Photographer has not stopped playing their album since we got home.
We Were Promised Jetpacks - Keeping Warm
Apparently it was the last night of the joint tour, and you could tell that the majority of the band members were sad about it. There was a lot of love in the room, some of it from the bands' family members, and we were told several times that the boys were all heading to Islands of Adventure the next day, heck, we even saw a few of them there while waiting for the Laura Veirs/Decemberists show to begin ... but that's a subject for another post ...
ETA: evidence that i might be wrong about that flash-in-the-pan assessment
1 comment:
"We Were Promised Jetpacks is a great name. It's nearly 2010: where are they?! and my flying car!
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