Don’t Check Me Out

Twin Shadow/Pains of Being Pure at Heart
Triple Rock Social Club
April 25, 2011

Packed house at the TR for this show. Or at least packed house for twin shadow (audience thinned out considerably by the time the Pains played.) clearly TS was the draw for this show (or maybe it was because it was a school night (monday) and everyone had to get home before the news was over.) and the audience gave them lots of love “you should be the headliner” yelled some doof next to us (really? you gotta yell dumb stuff like that to justify your existence?)
. Me? i was more into the Pains (even though i haven’t loved Belong and the twin shadow disc was #7 on my 2010 year end list (how’s that for self referential?)) but the thing is, neither band really blew me away.

both acts were more than competent and had the crowds involved but there were just too many little things that kept it from being memorable for me. Take Twin Shadow. i for one, really dug they synth-ey sound of Forget, so the rock out live versions were just a little too guitar centric (and boring guitar) for me. and really, all the tuning and standing around getting shit together on stage between songs definitely created lags (allowing doofs in the crowd to get all up and talky personal). what flies by on 40 minutes of record (and they played all of Forget, unless i’m missing something), really seemed drawn out during a 50 minute show. (not complaining about the 50 minutes, btw) and how about something new. Forget has been out awhile, you’ve got to have something, right?

pains are so young. makes me feel super old (which i am), not that that is any kind of a criticism. just observation. and the fact that a lot of their sound (at least on the first album and singles) was big was i was their age. and now they are all smashing pumpkins by way of silversun pickups (not that there is anything wrong with that either) just more observation. nothing wrong with a little cribbing early on. won’t play forever, but it’s fine enough for now (and they definitely know how to write a pop hook, you could teach a community to catch a boat load of fish with either of their albums) they never really caught fire on stage (for all their obvious enthusiasm). not sure why i wasn’t more taken with them. they worked it, and the viking talk (if not a little pandering to the crowd) was a bit of a pleasant shock (but boo to the vikings) maybe it just wasn’t anything you couldn’t see any other show by any other competent band any other day of the week and certainly, the biggest issue i had with pains were the sound issues. Both the sound levels on his voice (was there no one working the sound board who knew how to turn the volume up on berman’s mike?) and the fact that he isn’t really a very strong vocalist (I’d thought the off tune and slight singing on the first ep was an affectation, but now I see that that was closer to the (live) truth. that didn’t help matters.
(which is funny cos passion pit had their own technical difficulties with the same sound issues but that didn’t really stop the crowd’s delirium at that show and the pains have just as many if not more, crowd pleasing songs. )
dunno what the deal was. maybe it was the monday blahs. it’s a shame cos they both have a peck of great songs and even if they are a little (ha) derivative, they are both interesting artists and i’m curious to see how they grow (or don’t for that matter)

Maybe next time through they both will have grown as performers along with their artistic growth.