It's Tea-time for Indie Rockers
Friday night Seattlest headed to Neumos for the sold out Silversun Pickups show and Sunday we headed to the Paramount for the sold out Modest Mouse show (the latter courtesy of the ticket provided by Seattle Metblogs - thanks!). Ordinarily we'd split the reviews into separate posts but in this case the same lesson applies to each band so we've opted to combine them.
Friday our show-timing was off a bit so we showed up well into the SP's set. That wasn't the worst thing in the world, since the set seemed weighted toward the end with the songs we liked most. The encore drew from the Pikul EP, which we find to be much stronger than the full album, so we were happy for that. All that really mattered was that we got to hear "All the Go InBetweens" and "Creation Lake," so mission accomplished. That left us happy, and the band seemed genuinely appreciative of their reception.
Modest Mouse are probably used to the reception they received, especially here on their home turf. We didn't even bother to really keep track of what they were playing, but it drew from their entire discography and worked out well. We've never been all that impressed with MM live, and this didn't completely change our minds, but we do have to say that this current configuration is better than in the past. They're certainly more polished and stage-aware.
So what's our gripe with these two shows? Well, both lead singers' voices were pretty shot. It didn't take away from the experience too much, but all the same, who wants to be continually made aware of the fact that the band you paid to see did this same thing the previous night (and the night before that, and before that...)? We recognize bands are only human, but is it too much to ask that someone make sure that the lead singer gets hot tea with lemon before and after a show? We know pop stars have handlers and such to take care of those kinds of details, but can we just say that that is now the bassist's responsibility?
