"Robbers On The High Street" Show Reviewed Without Jokey Reference To Band Name

From upstate New York, Robbers on the High Street [MySpace] are that band you heard on the Wedding Crashers ("Love Underground") or Just Friends soundtrack ("Big Winter"). Maybe you tuned into KEXP on Monday and heard them on Cheryl Waters' show.

Or, if you were at Chop Suey last night, you heard them there. They played an hour-plus set heavy on material from their upcoming full album, Grand Animals, which builds on the EP The Fatalist and Friends.

People compare them to The Strokes and Spoon (which we see makes Spoon people crazy mad), even Maroon 5, but they're a young band and comparisons may not be what they need. They tend to play a bouncy, growly, guitar-heavy rock, but last night they trotted out a little white-boy funk, and some trumpet. It was an all-ages, Monday-night show, so they never seemed to get too carried away, started slow (there was a Kinks cover we can't remember the name of), rocked harder from mid-set on (where "The Fatalist" made its appearance), and closed without an encore. We don't know how we'd respond to toddlers moshing, ourselves, but we were a little let-down by the lack of an encore. We felt...robbed.