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blawgorama
Just got back from my second night at the Monolith Music Festival at Red Rocks. Definitely a mixed bag.
Highlights:
Ian Ball from Gomez, encouraging the crowd-- men and women alike -- to accept, if not embrace, their respective frustrations in a sing-along about premature ejaculation. "Don't Let A Little Failure Get You Down." Hilarious.
The Editors-- should have been on the main stage. They played with more energy and theatricality than most of bands booked in the big amphitheater.
Cake-- not the biggest fan of the band all-around, but the guitar player, Xan McCurdy is THE MAN. I would have been entirely entertained if the whole festival was just him, his Gretsch and an amp. No drums, no vocals, no lights, no nothin'. Just crazy Duane-Eddie-meets-Carl-Perkins guitar licks all day long. Awesome.
Cloud Cult-- I had never heard them before, but I liked them immediately. They remind me a little of The Arcade Fire; really big, expansive, dramatic songs that somehow make you feel incredibly sad and hopeful, all at the same time. I'm definitely gonna have to check out their album.
Kings Of Leon-- Last time I saw these guys, everyone in the band looked like Jesus, if he were reinvented as a dirty, burned-out hayseed, running moonshine in Appalachia. This time around, it was all pointy hipster boots, mod haircuts, and the kind of super-skinny jeans that threaten to cause major circulatory problems in the lower extremities of whiny emo bands. Nonetheless, they brought the same hard-drinkin', gritty, mush-mouthed Nashville rock that made me like 'em in the first place.
Spoon-- when they stuck to the song, they were awesome.
Art Brut—I *heart* bands who can’t really play all that well, but still manage to make good music anyway.
The Flaming Lips-- Four-Star. top-notch, high-quality fucked-up shit. Freak-ay deak-ay. I thought Wayne could have done more singing, and less sermon-giving, but it was still a ton of fun to watch these guys turn Red Rocks into some sort of ultra-weird, hallucinatory, Jim-Henson-On-Peyote bender . Santa + aliens + balloons + confetti + crazy dude beating the crap out of an acrylic drum kit = fun.
Bummers:
The Decemberists -- it was like watching a badly unrehearsed local band stumble their way through a set of Decemberist cover tunes. I've seen more polish at a Wednesday open-mic night at Herman's. A fuckin' trainwreck. They lapsed into a totally tone-deaf refrain of "You Are My Sunshine" at one point, while their singer tried to fix his guitar-- like the kind of thing you might imagine your talent-less uncle singing when unexpectedly yanked onstage at a VFW fundraiser and told to fill for time while they count the raffle. I was seriously embarrassed for them.
The Mobius Band-- I love these guys on CD, but they just didn't seem to be able to pull it off live. A bad mix didn't help.
The Hot IQ's -- I really, really try to like this band. I *want* to like this band. I honestly do. I'm so happy that someone in Denver is playing music outside of the standard bar-band stuff that curses most acts in this city, and I'm genuinely stoked about the attention they've brought Denver's indie scene.... I was even hired by The Denver Post to design a website for these guys when they went to SXSW, but I still can't bring myself to get into their music. I think they're funny, I think they're smart, I respect what they’re trying to do, I have a bit of a crush on their drummer (who doesn't?)... but I just don’t understand why people here have made them such a big deal. To me, there’s a dozen much better bands, writing much better songs, who are far more deserving of our local hype than these guys. A guy like Adrian Romero, who's a bona fide talent, gets chased-off to New York for being too artsy and musical, but a completely average band like Hot IQ's become everyone's local darling. I don’t get it, I guess.
Spoon -- Like I said, when they stuck to the song, they were great. When they "jammed", and the singer/guitarist made the mistake of thinking he was a soloist, I cringed. Normally, I like seeing someone wail uninformedly on a guitar. Seriously. I live for that shit. As a horrible guitar player myself, I love watching someone hammer away on an instrument they only have the faintest idea how to play. It's fun; like watching little kids bunch up in pee-wee soccer games. I truly find deep, genuine joy when someone just picks up a musical instrument, starts a band, and makes noise with child-like abandon. I think that fuckin’ rules. But this guy needed to give it a rest already.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club-- I missed 'em. Dammit.
So there you go—an unsolicited, pretentious, self-righteous review from an aging, washed-up, curmudgeonly ex-sixth-tier-local-band dork. Lucky you. ;)
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