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.

Whaddaya wanna know about this tallest motherfucker around guy? What’d he play? I will try to reconstruct a set list — from memory!

I Won’t Be Found
Pistol Dreams
Honey Won’t You Let Me In
Shallow Grave
Where Do My Bluebird Fly
The Gardener
Into The Stream
Steal Tomorrow
King Of Spain
This Wind
Over The Hills
I Fall To Pieces (Patsy Cline Cover)

I don’t think he played The Sparrow And The Medicine, and he definitely didn’t play The Blizzard’s Never Seen The Desert Sands or Walk The Line (neither his nor Johnny Cash’s). The set list is crazy out of order, by the way. I know I Won’t Be Found was first, and I Fall To Pieces was last before the two-song encore. He played another cover but I forget what it was; not Nico’s These Days, which I was kind of hoping he would play.

In any event, he was fantastic, of course. He sings like a pirate and prowls like a panther. He’s also not afraid to use one mic for both his acoustic guitar and his vocals. He was forced to do this when for some reason the amp went out and his guitar became suddenly very quiet and small-sounding. His quick adjustment saved the song, though, and the sound gentlemen fixed the problem for the next cut. That’s what I call teamwork.

Elvis and his band came onstage about a half an hour later, at 10:30, Elvis in a hunting-orange knit cap and giant white scarf. Here I must take a moment to mention the members of Dearland by name. They are: Brigham Brough, Wyndham Boylan-Garnett, and Nick Kinsey. Are you kidding me with those names? They sound like they could be the tri-captains of the Phillips Exeter varsity squash team.

One thing that Elvis has been shying away from lately is the acoustic guitar. When I saw him last summer, I was surprised to see him play what I think was a Fender Jaguar for pretty much the whole set, and avoiding the acoustic altogether. At Bowery last week, he also stuck with electric until after the show (more on that shortly), plugging in the Jaguar and a couple of hollow-bodied somethings (one was an Epiphone). I think the electric guitars is part of an attempt to shed the folksy singer-songwriter image, which I can understand, since that’s really a saturated market, and most of his first record, Ash Wednesday, falls under many of the descriptors which are associated with that scene.

The songs remained mostly down-tempo and delicate throughout the evening, with a surprise highlight for me being a cover of the previously unknown to me spiritual Weeping Mary, the “sister song” to Perkins staple Weeping Pilgrim. Dearland are no Fleet Foxes, but their harmonies were still affecting. There were plenty of upbeat numbers, though, including album standout Hey with Kinsey parading around the stage with a bass drum and tambourine. Members of Himalayas came onstage for that and several other songs to provide the brass accompaniment.

Elvis closed out the set with a reworked version of While You Were Sleeping, introducing it with a half-apology about not playing enough material from the first record. With the acoustic guitar gone, the Ash Wednesday highlight took on a tauter, wiry atmosphere, while the other instrumentation, with a new band member joining in on on each verse, kept the progression of the song intact. After a brief break the band came out for the encore and did the old start-the-encore-with-a-slow-song trick, languidly but tightly playing through How’s Forever Been, Baby, an excellent vehicle for Elvis’s keen sense of vocal phrasing. The second song of the encore, and last of the night, was stomper Doomsday, which found Kinsey again strapping on the bass drum and joining several of Himalayas’ brass men at the front of the stage.

At the end of Doomsday, the Himalayas leader and another couple of band members kept playing right at the foot of the stage, and several others, including Elvis Perkins and Dearland, were processing through the club. I grabbed a set list then quickly headed to the back of the room to follow the bands outside, where they were still playing riffs from Doomsday in front of the entrance to the ballroom. At this point, Elvis was playing an acoustic guitar, but I’m pretty sure he had been playing an electric on stage. Someone had the inevitable idea to head down the soapy stairs into the Bowery JMZ station, and as soon as everyone with an instrument was in, I followed right behind. We marched through the station, past MTA employees who seemed grateful for the distraction, and popped out the other side to continue the ruckus.

I’ll upload a photo when I get my computer back (maybe), but here is a transcription of the decidedly new-album-heavy set list below:

Stay Zombie
Shampoo
I Heard Your Voice in Dresden
Chains, Chains, Chains
Hey
I’ll Be Arriving
Stop, Drop, Rock and Roll
Weeping Mary
Ash Wednesday
Davey
Send My Fond Regards to Lonelyville
Hours Last Stand
While You Were Sleeping

How’s Forever Been Baby
Doomsday