A Birdmonster And A Starsailor Walk Into A Bar

So the last two days we heard seven bands. And that was a Sunday and Monday night! Our ears are tired. Not that you care. Where the hell were you, anyway? About 20 people showed up for the El Corazon show. It was all-ages, but only four under-21ers skipped Sunday-night homework to come. A bunch of Euro-sausage arrived late to catch Starsailor at the Crocodile. You know, with their Euro-pop t-shirts and orange sneakers. It was like a tale of two night clubs: one gritty (i.e., an actual leaking ceiling) and over-amplified, with a fiercely indie audience, and the other gritty (the ceiling has various kinds of sound baffles nailed to it) and over-amplified, with a used-to-know-someone-who-was-fiercely-indie crowd.

1) We'll be brief. At El Corazon, a cute sister act kicked things off, Town Crier [myspace]. No one was there yet, so they dragged the other bands in to be the audience. Their gimmick is to sing songs about "the news": bird flu, or that deaf girl who got hit by a train while text messaging. They're fun, and one reminded me of Susanna Hoffs (or maybe we just like that photo) -- but the songs themselves are not that lyrically quirky or varied musically.

2) Then there was White Gold [myspace]. They're loud and intense. A little too intense: the lead singer sings every song with the same piercing head-voice, which some people like. (Someone bought those PIL albums.) But they have a song called "In the Event of Nuclear War." So that must be considered. And "Bells Bells Bells" was, in this context, affecting somehow. We don't have time to parse our emotional response, we're just saying. Oh, and we recall the bass player doing some wonderful things.

3) We were immediate fans of LA band Division Day [myspace]. We don't put indie and LA together, usually, but what do we know? This is indie rock with a pulse. We believe the lead singer is named Rohner Segnitz; his voice has a soft, suede texture that contrasts well with their energetic, uptempo sound. They like to start out slow and soft and then build until the venue collapses in a swirling, drumming frenzy.

4) Finally, San Francisco's Birdmonster [myspace] (who also have a tour blog) capped off the night with the single most engaging performance we've seen this year. Peter Arcuni is the slightly built lead vocalist, but there's a lot crammed into a small package. The first song he was brandishing his guitar and one-foot, kick-hopping his way across the stage. (It would be fair to say that all the members of the band brandish their instruments. They're a high-energy bunch.) Their songs have a hint of almost anything about them if you listen hard enough, but you can usually count on a wall of jangly guitar at some point -- the songs tend to evolve into different shapes as they go along. "Ice Age" starts like coffeehouse folk and then the Ramones show up.

5) At the Crocodile, a good portion of the eventual audience missed out on Peter Walker [myspace]. Apparently if you're a fan of Neil Young or Wilco, you will like Peter Walker. We don't count ourselves in either group, but we've been enjoying the Pete Yorn-y sound of "What Do I Know." He's a tuneful singer/songwriter with a "scruffy voice" who writes "lived-in" songs. Let us try to precisionize that a little: he's often singing as if talking quietly to himself, then scrambles upwards for notes with a kind of yowl. We thought his bassist looked like a blond Jack Black. It's the kind of soulful, real-world heartache they're looking for over on the Mountain.

6) Brother Man Dude [myspace]. What can we say? They play the rock music. The eponymous Brother Man Dude is from Australia, but we didn't think they sounded like Men at Work or INXS. Very puzzling. How to pigeonhole? They're a notch above an Aussie bar band. All the songs are listenable, but they don't -- except for the one about global warming -- stand out that much.

7) People who think Starsailor [myspace] sound like Coldplay are not listening all that closely. Coldplay ultimately is emo-pop; Starsailor is what happens when David Gray and Neil Diamond try to inhabit the same physical space: an improbably lyrical, angry-when-drunk working class kid ends up with an unquenchable gift for sing-along melody. It sounds like singer James Walsh has hit a few rough patches in relationships, but he certainly knows how to flirt with a crowd. We recall the set list included "Poor Misguided Fool," "Love Is Here," "Fever," "Counterfeit," and, for the encore, "Good Souls." In the middle there, they sang their U.S. hit "Alcoholic" ("don't you know you've got your daddy's eyes/daddy was an alcoholic"), which we had always assumed was sung by the Black Crowes. So that was a learning experience, right there.