Young The Giant, Awolnation, and Parlour Shakedown
Wednesday, March 30 at The Camel
It’s always interesting to catch a band when they are right in the middle of getting popular. Sometimes you end up seeing a total madhouse–the club is already way too small for how big the band is, and people are practically hanging from the ceiling. Other, more awkward times, you might encounter a band with a single on the radio who end up playing to half a dozen people because almost no one has figured out the name of the band who does that new song yet. Young The Giant struck a happy balance between these two extremes at The Camel last week, drawing a substantial but not overwhelming crowd mostly consisting of eager teenagers; kids in that inbetween age, when you’re old enough to hear about music that isn’t exactly in the top 40, but still young enough that your awareness of hip new sounds pretty much ends at the playlist of the local alternative rock station. I’m not hating–kids like that are enthusiastic and open-minded, virtues often absent their jaded hipster elders. I got to see that enthusiasm firsthand at this show, and it was an inspiring experience.
Young The Giant, Awolnation, and Parlour Shakedown
Wednesday, March 30 at The Camel
It’s always interesting to catch a band when they are right in the middle of getting popular. Sometimes you end up seeing a total madhouse–the club is already way too small for how big the band is, and people are practically hanging from the ceiling. Other, more awkward times, you might encounter a band with a single on the radio who end up playing to half a dozen people because almost no one has figured out the name of the band who does that new song yet. Young The Giant struck a happy balance between these two extremes at The Camel last week, drawing a substantial but not overwhelming crowd mostly consisting of eager teenagers; kids in that inbetween age, when you’re old enough to hear about music that isn’t exactly in the top 40, but still young enough that your awareness of hip new sounds pretty much ends at the playlist of the local alternative rock station. I’m not hating–kids like that are enthusiastic and open-minded, virtues often absent their jaded hipster elders. I got to see that enthusiasm firsthand at this show, and it was an inspiring experience.
The evening started off with a performance by local youngsters Parlour Shakedown, who opened their set with an unplanned cover of “Me And Mia” by Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, performed as a sort of impromptu soundcheck. Two songs later, they covered A-ha’s “Take On Me,” which started me worrying that their set would be half cover songs, but fortunately those were the only two they played. The version of “Take On Me” also brought home to me just how young the members of Parlour Shakedown really are; introducing the song, singer John Mincks commented that everyone in the band had been born in the 90s, and therefore might be out of line to do a cover of such a celebrated 80s song. Talking to him after the set, I learned that the oldest member of Parlour Shakedown is 19, and that three of them are still in high school. It’s been a long time since I encountered a band this young in any genre of music, but Parlour Shakedown proved to me that, in the words of the old cliche, the kids are all right. Mincks’s stage presence was assured and maybe even a bit over-the-top–he shimmied and strutted in a manner that would have seemed obnoxiously cock-rock coming from a more conventional-looking frontman. Instead, with his mop of curly red hair and his thick black-rimmed glasses, Mincks’s dancing almost seemed like an ironic comment on his own potential to be referred to as a nerd. He reminded me of Elvis Costello in that way, and it allowed him to completely succeed in his portrayal of a sexy rock n’ roll frontman, whether he was being ironic or not. The teenaged girls in the front row ate it up.
Mincks wasn’t the only thing to watch during Parlour Shakedown’s set, either. The band members were kind of crammed together onto the small stage, but their mascot, a four-foot-tall stuffed dog named Rush Limbark, occupied the space immediately in front of the stage. At one point during the set, Mincks jokingly tossed the stuffed dog into the front row as the song began, and the kids in the crowd batted him around like a beachball. Considering the dog’s actual weight, this might not have been a good idea–at least once, I was sure that the lighting rig above the stage was about to be knocked down–but the song ended without major incident, at which time Mincks, a bit unnerved, pulled Rush Limbark down from the crowd and placed him back on the floor. Parlour Shakedown’s music was just as enjoyable as their goofy, crowd-pleasing stage show, with a comparison to the melodic indie-punk of Ted Leo being more than a little accurate. They also had elements of the quirky post-hardcore pop of bands like The Promise Ring, though their musicianship was far more conventionally talented than a lot of the bands from that scene and era. For example, unlike Cap’n Jazz’s Tim Kinsella, who couldn’t quite pull off the octave-jumping vocal acrobatics of “Take On Me,” John Mincks had no problem nailing that song’s four-octave chorus. My one critique is based in my tendency to prefer guitars over pretty much any other instrument–I felt that the decision to have guitarist Kevin Zweerink switch to synthesizer several times, and even tambourine on one song, was perhaps not the best one. If you have the option for two guitars on every song, I’m always going to recommend taking that option. But maybe that’s just me.
Awolnation followed Parlour Shakedown, and from the moment they took the stage, they exuded the essence of “the music industry” (scare quotes intentional). It’s relatively rare in the alternative rock underground–and thank goodness for that–but some bands that I encounter from time to time make clear from their very appearance that they could only come from LA. Awolnation had that going on in spades, from the too-old hotshot lead guitarist who looked like a member of the Wallflowers to the singer’s asymmetrical haircut and blowsy boatneck shirt (or whatever it was–see photographic evidence to determine for yourself). The singer’s stage presence was a perfect example, by the way, of the fact that a better-looking singer with the same stage presence as John Mincks of Parlour Shakedown would probably just seem sleazy. When he swiveled his hips and tossed his hair around, it was just kind of off-putting. Anyway, I’d heard Awolnation’s recent single online before the show and been thoroughly unimpressed. The entire band is a studio-based solo project by singer Aaron Bruno, who previously fronted failed major-label alt-rock band Under The Influence Of Giants. For this tour, it seemed that he’d put together a band of hired guns to take his songs on the road, and I was therefore expecting a passionless and somewhat clueless exercise in attempting to capitalize on a currently popular style. About 25% of the time, that’s exactly what I got–mediocre ideas for melodic alt-rock songs, ruined in execution due to saturation with bad bar-rock cliches. This description perfectly fits their first single, “Sail,” which caused a kid standing near me to freak out when they played it. “I heard this song on the radio while I was driving here tonight!” he excitedly declared to a friend standing next to him. I succumbed to a brief moment of jaded cynicism, rolling my eyes at the fact that recognition alone had allowed the kid to forgive the horrible cock-rock solo wankery laid down by the lead guitarist at the end of the song, among other transgressions.
But my cynicism was surprisingly unmerited by the majority of the set, and as Awolnation continued to play, I had to grudgingly admit that I liked around three out of every four songs they did. Their drummer, bassist, and rhythm guitarist/keyboard player all looked and played like young post-hardcore musicians who’d taken a touring gig to make some quick money. For all I know, that’s exactly what they were, and they’ll never be part of Awolnation again. Regardless, though, the talent and spirit of this section of the band did a lot to drive the best songs in the set, pushing past the sleazy vibe the singer and lead guitarist sometimes put out to get the optimum sound out of the material they’d been given–some of which, to give Bruno his due, was quite good. I have a feeling that if I bought the album, I’d find that at least some of the songs I liked in their live versions would be ruined by studio production or less appropriate choices of instrumentation. That’s reason enough not to bother buying the record, as far as I’m concerned. But I was at least able to enjoy the majority of Awolnation’s set while I was watching it, and they deserve credit for that.
I wandered off and talked to a couple of friends during the set break before Young The Giant, and to my chagrin, my inattentiveness cost me the opportunity to stand in the front while they played. In venues like the Camel, where the stage is only a foot high, I find it extremely frustrating to stand in a spot where I can only see the heads of the musicians while they play, and I’m normally very good about not having that happen. However, in this case, the eager teenagers I described back at the beginning of this article swarmed to the front, unafraid to let considerations of appearing properly above-it-all keep them from getting a good spot for the band they came to see. More power to those kids, and I hope they stay that excited about live music for years to come. I didn’t like getting stuck a dozen rows back, but ultimately, they deserved the front row more than I did. I was there in the spirit of careful observation. Those kids were there to rock the fuck out, which they proved as soon as Young The Giant’s set started.
They opened up with “Apartment,” the followup single to the big hit that drew everyone out to the club in the first place (more on that later), and one of the two songs by Young The Giant that I had heard before seeing them play. It’s a good song, with a more delicate pop sound than the propulsive rhythm of the aforementioned debut single, and listening to them play it live, I could see exactly why they had been associated with bands like Minus The Bear before hitting it big. While I wouldn’t say that Young The Giant have the ironic sensibility of bands like Minus The Bear or The Dismemberment Plan, they do share a similar musical drive, as they are clearly driven to intermingle more complex, off-kilter melodies with pure pop choruses. In a live setting, the Arcade Fire vibe I had gotten from their studio work, though still detectable, was de-emphasized in favor of a quirky indie sound that made it obvious exactly why they’ve connected with so many members of the young alt-rock generation. Theirs is a generation that didn’t grow up with punk rock and hardcore as part of the landscape, the way I did–the role punk played in my teenaged musical awakening was played for these teenagers and early twentysomethings by the melodic emo, indie, and post-hardcore sounds that kids in my generation created when we were their age. So now, twenty years on, bands like Young The Giant continue to manipulate that sound and find new ways to express the ideas at its core–the desire to make pop music without being boring or appealing to the lowest common denominator. I didn’t know many of their songs while I watched them play, but nonetheless, I was often humming along by the final chorus, totally drawn in by the excellently constructed and perfectly played riffs and vocal melodies. I’ve said before that these guys seem destined to play arenas, and whether or not commercial considerations make my predictions seem accurate in five years, it’s clear that they have the necessary talent to take their music that far. By the time they ended their set with that big hit single, “My Body,” the entire crowd had been worked into a frenzy. When the drummer rolled straight out of the final beat of their second-to-last song into the pounding toms that introduce “My Body,” everyone started yelling and jumping up and down. It was the perfect crescendo to an entire set that had built up to this moment, and with teenaged kids all around me singing along at the tops of their voices and pogoing like the crowd at a 1977 Sex Pistols show, I got drawn right into the fervor. The studio version of “My Body” is a good tune, but the version that was played last week at The Camel felt like the best version that will ever exist, at least in the short moments that it spent in the world.
When that song, and Young The Giant’s set, reached their end, huge portions of the crowd howled for an encore, but the band only smiled, set down their instruments, and walked off the stage. Even ignoring practical considerations (the show was all ages, and therefore had to end at 11 PM; Young The Giant finished playing at 11:01), how could Young The Giant possibly hope to follow that song with anything other than a horrible anti-climax? Sometimes, leaving when the crowd still wants more is the best decision possible, and by recognizing that situation when it was upon them, Young The Giant showed that they know what makes a great live set. I wouldn’t be surprised if, next time they hit town, they play a venue that holds two to three times as many people–and I would fully expect to see everyone that was at the show at The Camel last week in attendance. Even me.
