Monday, June 26, 2006

We Are Scientists / Fiery Furnaces / Radio 4 live Friday 6/23/06

Can you believe I went 2 full weeks without catching a show? Me neither. I finally got back into the swing of things last Friday, by watching We Are Scientists and Fiery Furnaces @ First Avenue, and Radio 4 @ Triple Rock. My buddy Brody already wrote a nice recap of the evening. Head over and wish him a Happy Birthday. Here are my pics:

Update: I added some commentary and tunage to this somewhat lazy post...

We Are Scientists

We Are Scientists live @ First Avenue 6/23/06

Setlist: We Are Scientists live @ First Avenue 6/23/06

All photos from We Are Scientists here. Slideshow here.

What a difference a smaller venue makes! Last time I saw WAS 3 weeks ago they opened up for Arctic Monkeys at the Wiltern Theater in LA. Their performance in the large venue was ok, however they were totally outplayed by the Monkeys. At First Avenue Friday, they performed pretty much the same setlist; but actually being able to see them from about 10 feet away made a huge difference. So much better, both on a visual and musical level. Guitarist/lead vocalist Keith Murray sounded excellent and the band delivered an energetic performance. My only criticism would be that the songs sound too-much-the-same and are a bit vocal-heavy at times. We’ll see what their second album brings…

mp3: We Are Scientists - Can't Lose
We Are Scientists MySpace

Fiery Furnaces

Fiery Furnaces live @ First Avenue 6/23/06

All photos from Fiery Furnaces here. Slideshow here.

I only watched about 30 minutes of FF. Even though they had a lot of energy and their music sounded great, that was plenty. While I do like the band quite a bit, their music just simply gets on my nerves after a while. Not easy to digest in my opinion. The brother and sister fronted band has a tendency to change up their music live to a point that it’s almost unrecognizable. Case in point, they didn’t even bring a keyboard for this tour. Still, they were a lot better this time compared to when I saw them @ Austin City Limits last year. Of course that could have something to do with the temperature in First Avenue being less than 100 degrees. Please FF, bring back the keyboards!

mp3: Fiery Furnaces - Here Comes The Summer
Fiery Furnaces MySpace

Radio 4

Radio 4 live @ Triple Rock 6/23/06

All photos from Radio 4 here. Slideshow here.

Definitely my favorite live performance of the night. The band raced through all the good stuff from their new album “Enemies Like This”, as well as previous efforts “Stealing Of A Nation”, “Gotham”, and “The New Song And Dance”. The show was sparsely attended, perhaps 1/3 full. Still, their closing tune “Absolute Affirmation” had the small crowd in a frenzy and seemed like a fitting song to close out the night.

mp3: Radio 4 - Absolute Affirmation
Radio 4 MySpace

Have a great Monday! SOUND team / Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin @ 400 Bar tonight...

- Steve

4 comments:

F.J. Delgado said...

Cool pictures... sounds like a quality show, WAS has some solid tunes. What was their best song of the night?

Steve said...

FJD: The tune I posted was my favorite... however, it all sounded pretty good. The final two tunes (see setlist photo) totally rocked...

- Steve

c said...

i think WAS is too pop-punkish. but they really put on a good show and are super professional. it's just all a bit TRL or something. or maybe i'm just gettin' old.....

Steve said...

C: Yeah, you're right, they are pretty pop-punkish...