Tin Speaker

I’m sorry for the delay in posting this; I wrote a bunch of words here and then lost them to the cloud. After being sad about this for quite some time, I pulled myself together and rewrote the post. Here it is.

This is one of the shows I go into without huge expectations. The Pains have some wonderful songs, Suckers won me over last time I saw them, and tickets were only $13. I was also of course honored to accompany once again the stately and serene Good King to a wonderful concertgoing experience. Unfortunately, this past Tuesday found the Good King falling victim to his colossal kingly duties, and he was forced to surrender his ticket. I soldiered on to the concert with admirable resolve, satisfied that the Good King’s replacement would at least attempt to fight someone, in order to recreate the experience of accompanying the fiery King Martinslas to a show. This is all I ask for in a companion. If said companion is reading this, know that in failing to punch even a single man in the head and also keeping all your blood inside your body the entire evening you have greatly disappointed the Good King and indeed his entire glorious realm.

You’ve already read some of my thoughts about Suckers. How did they hold up live the second time around? Ha! I’ll never tell.

The Pains are an extremely straightforward band. Much has been said about how derivative they are of bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, but I most critics still give them props, and I will agree that originality is not terribly important here. The songs on their self-titled début LP are rather consistently pleasant, with the comforting fuzz and noise and distortion enveloping tunes that would be pretty comforting themselves, on their own.

This is not a band that traffics much in irony; their songs are simple, they sound pretty much the same live as they do in the studio, and you should just go ahead and enjoy them, whaddaya say? The lyrics, of course, complicate things a bit, but come on, you can’t understand most of them, anyway. (If you’re curious, check here for some of the official lyrics. Peep Young Adult Friction (“never thought I would come of age / let alone on a moldy page” library sex strong!) and This Love Is Fucking Right! (it’s really, really not)).

The Pains take the stage with the drummer in the back and everyone else (guitar, bass, guitar/vocals, keyboard/vocals) lined up in front next to each other. Taking straightforward literally, these guys. (I showed them an advance copy of this post, is why. A long time ago. I write these waaay in advance. Hell, I don’t even go to half the shows. They’re literally old news to me). The crowd was actually quite enthusiastic, though I may have been influenced in my perception by the shrieking (I mean really shrieking, just unbelievably high-pitched) mulleted gentleman and his fellow-shrieker. They played for about 35 minutes, then came back for a one-song encore. A bit short, that. But then, they haven’t many songs, really. And I’m sure they got their paper at the end of the night, so what do they care?

Ha! Did you really think that I would deny you, gentle reader, the pleasure of my thoughts on Suckers’ performance? I would not be so callous as to deny your worthy souls the comforting embrace of a thought or two.

One thing that’s cool about Suckers is that they do the experimental noodly electronic sampler Roland SP-404 thing but they’re not grating with it. Just some tasteful touches, and that’s that. Restraint is the order of the day. Except the lead singer had this wild wrap ’round his head. Pretty showy, that.

This entry was posted on 02 Jun 2009 at 2:25 am and is filed under music. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: bowery ballroom, fender jaguar, no set list, no setlist, suckers, the pains of being pure at heart