But I Was There: The Wombats/The Squares @ Cinespace, 8/7/07

Guaranteed to leave your memory less than "Crystal" clear (GET IT?!??!)

The Squares, "Bottle Me Up" (album version) - Long-time readers - a category which, in relation to this site, refers to anyone who's been reading longer than since, like, February - may remember a long, rambly (moreso than usual, even) post I wrote about my friend Shaun's band the Squares - or, rather, about basically everything EXCEPT the Squares. It's not that they were a bad band, but when it came to their music, them crazy kids were so clearly (a) working in a musical idiom (poppy emo) that tends to leave yr boy kinda flat and (b) in desperate, pleading need of tightening up their sound that I was left with no choice but to do the critical fan dance. That, however, was several squillion months ago; in the interim, they cut their drummer loose, replaced him with some new dude they found on Craigslist, somehow got themselves booked as the opening act for the Wombats' gig at Cinespace on Tuesday night, and then proceeded to blow my fucking mind with just how good they've gotten since their last appearance in this space. I mean, I still wouldn't put them in the same echelon as Escort or Explorer's Club or the Procession when we're setting up the list of up-and-coming American indie-rock royalty, but man oh man did they ever get good. I mean, hell, I've only been waiting for nine months to see the Wombats, but thanks to the Squares (and the gallons of promotional vodka I poured down my throat) I barely have anything to say about them.

Well, okay, that's not true. The Wombats were, of course, fun as fuck, although anything less from a band who put out an album as riotously enjoyable as Girls, Boys, & Marsupials (an album which I'm still loving almost as much all these months after getting it - outside of the Long Blondes' Someone To Drive You Home, I'm hard-pressed to think of a nu-Britpop album with a comparable shelf-life) would be unacceptable. I missed a few songs looking for a bathroom in which to relieve myself of some of the aforementioned free vodka so I may have missed them playing "Lost in the Post", but other than that they kept their set lean, mean, and with a definite ebb and flow to it - hell, they kicked things off with "Girls, Boys, & Marsupials" (aka the acapella album-closer) seemingly as a piss-take, although it did do a fine job of building anticipation for the rocking-er moments yet to come. And boy did they ever come; when the 'bats launched into "Moving To New York", you could practically hear the audience's collective interest come to a knife-sharp point, no mean feat considering that we're talking about a TUESDAY AT CINESPACE here - it takes one hell of a band to get a room full of label reps to stop trading war stories from lining up to buy an iPhone, but damned if the Wombats didn't pull it off.

Unfortunately, it has to be said that in doing so, they didn't really offer up anything which couldn't be gleaned just as easily from the album. That's not a dis, of course - believe me, there's plenty of bands who I can only wish were good enough to be as good as their recorded stuff, especially when the stuff in question is as indisputably top-shelf as Girls, Boys & Marsupials - but it did put them at something of a competitive disadvantage when trying to seize the crown from the Squares, who turned in an eye-opening set for anyone who'd ever come in contact with their music previously. I really actually feel kinda bad foaming at the mouth about the salutary effects of the Squares replacing their drummer given how much of said drummer's beer I've drunk over the years at Shaun's house parties, but facts are fuckin' facts: the simple act of shoring up one pillar of their rhythm section seems to have galvanized both of the other Squares into getting their shit into lockstep formation, and the end result is just a quantum leap in the right direction. For one thing, given their predilection for glossy, prefab indie-pop, the ability to keep rigidly to a beat is of paramount importance; this is, after all, a band that worships at the feet of the Cars, and I think we can all agree that "Shake It Up" would be exponentially less satisfying if David Robinson had gone slippin' and slidin' all over the place. More crucially, though, having a reliable rhythm section frees Shaun's vocals from being forced to give their songs their shape. Shaun's not a bad singer, but he does have one of those idiosyncratic thin indie yelping timbres to his voice which works about eleven thousand times better complementing the rest of the track as opposed to leading it by the nose into Proper Songville. And now that Shaun isn't compelled to try to fill in inconsistently-laid-out patterns thanks to their new drummer and his ability to actually create rigid rhythms (as opposed to alluding to their existence - again, sry Nate), he can focus on performing the songs more effectively, and boy is he ever able to do so.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that the Squares are glory-bound for stardom now; they've still got a ways to go, especially when it comes to pruning the their songs' lyrical content for the benefit of how well it scans (this is going to sound seriously ironic coming from my sesquipedalian ass, but I'm a firm believer in the idea that all bands with any designs on going big should try to write songs based around hooks of no more than either two words or four syllables). But listen to "Bottle Me Up" and tell me you can't hear the pop chops already present, even in this old mix with their old drummer (not the best way to present evidence for the band's advancement, I admit, but they haven't rerecorded this song with their new drummer and it really is the best showcase for their faculties as a pop band), and imagine how much more effectively they'd be able to be deployed with a more capable rhythm section. I mean, I'm not saying they're going to be the next U2 or Radiohead or OMC or what have you - I'm just trying to say that, with a little work, they could turn out to be an indie-pop outfit capable of scratching the same itches as Los Campesinos! or the Moths, and that's not a bad place for a young band to be. (Click here to buy the Squares' Call Me When Your Boyfriend's Dead direct from the band, or click here to buy digital copies of Wombats song from their digital store. Also, anyone who wants to buy me the Official Wombats Cuddly Wombat may feel free to do so.)

The Long Weekend, "Record" - Speaking of bands about whom I hate to talk shit, here's the Long Weekend, a band which seems downright poised to be this year's edition of the template filled out so ably last year by the Rifles. Looking back at their debut single "Medway Is The Difference (Between My Town And Yours)", I'm frankly a little embarassed that it took me so long to reach that conclusion; it took me about four seconds' worth of "Record" to lead me to the conclusion that these guys' one trick involves robbing Mod titans blind without feeling the need to cite their sources. This certainly isn't to say that I give a fuck, of course; for one, the Kinks have always left me kinda cold (that's right, I said it - motherfuck a Village Green Presevation Society), and for another, the Long Weekend are really really really effective thieves, or at least certainly good enough at thievin' to lift me up and over any lingering angst over credibility from my days as a middle-school dumbass. I mean, "Record" isn't anything even remotely novel; even restricted simply to the context of the band's output, its most original feature is probably that tambourine which shows up for the chorus to lend it a little Stax-y flavor, and what with Mark Ronson's existence this year it's a little hard to laud that as a stroke of heroic boldness. The thing is,the song they've come up with is so invigorating and effective that I just don't have it in me to give a fuck; the overall arrangement of "Record" is so expertly managed that I don't even have it in me to knock the band for tacking superfluous real estate onto such an obvious candidate for a three-minute gem of a pop single. I have no idea how well this approach will (or even can) play out over the course of an album, but I do know that I'll be checking in with the Long Weekend every chance I get to get a better idea. Oh, and I also know that that Rifles album deserved way better treatment than it got from the open market. If nothing else, it's at least better than the friggin' Maccabees album. (Click here to buy the "Record" 7" from Norman Records)

The Rushes, "Ripping It Down" - Look, as someone who's an avowed-enough sucker for a big, space-filling piano to find himself constitutionally incapable of switching stations whenever Train's "Drops of Jupiter" comes on (hands-down the most shameful admission in the history of this blog, and that covers some ground), my admiration for the Rushes' "Ripping It Down" was more or less a given - make it through the first thirty seconds and you'll hear what I'm talking about. What I'd like to draw your attention towards, however, is everything else about this song - or, better yet, everything else which inevitably won't be a factor in whether or not they start pulling in that Coldplay cream. I mean, sure, I guess you can focus on the almost-abrasive friendliness of the track's structuring or its mom-beckoning falsetto opening - yeah, okay, it's kinda breathtakingly cloying and tacky, and given my explosive allergy to wussy bullshit like the Turin Brakes or Richard Hawley I can't really fault anyone for turning elsewhere. But good lord, do I ever pity those of you who check out early on this one; you'll be missing out on some truly glorious multi-part harmonies and a tempo-shift which you can practically see the drummer poised at the ready to launch into and a piano being played by someone who really knows who to wring it dry of drama. I mean, these are downright inexhaustible virtues, folks; I've overlooked worse crimes against music for far lesser rewards (as previously mentioned - seriously, sheesh), and as long as the Rushes keep offering them up with such smirk-free ease, I'll be making a point to keep right on keepin' on. "Ripping It Down" is just a spectacular song, easily the best one I'm posting in this batch, and its b-side ("Will You Won't You") is shockingly close to being almost as good, so hopefully I'll be able to do so for years to come. (Click here to buy the "Ripping It Down" 7" from Piccadilly. Also, simply because the potential for lolz grossly outweighs the guilt which comes from being a jerk, I do have to point out this post on their MySpace blog which may well typify Spectacular Review-Oriented Indie Butthurtedness for the next decade and beyond - seriously, gang, anytime you start off a post by declaring that you'd never give a second thought to reviews, you've more or less pushed the horse out of the barn and blown the door into smithereens already. Doesn't reduce their gifts as songsmiths one iota, though.)

Sparrow House, "The Reflection" (Daytrotter session) - Part of me kinda thinks that the next Voxtrot album should be a split affair, with half the tracks going to Ramesh & the Gang and the other half being given over wholly to keyboardist Jared Van Fleet's Sparrow House project; I kinda get the feeling that the contrast between Voxtrot's insistent dynamism and Sparrow House's trademark lo-fi whispery gentility would go a long way towards rectifying the complaints of the nation of folks who are wholeheartedly entitled to their desperately wrong opinions about Voxtrot (i.e. everyone except me and Cindy Hotpoint). Of course, I also kinda think that Van Fleet has it in him to come up with even more compelling songs on his own than with his bandmates; if I had any doubt left after the gorgeously unassuming "When I Am Gone" (available for downloading on Sparrow House's site), it all certainly got resolved by the time he came knocking to do a Daytrotter session and dropped this woozy, gauzy, breezy, other-adjectives-which-end-in-zy little gem on us all. I mean, this is gorgeous stuff in the same vein of those Lou Reed songs where he capitulates to prettiness, and that simply isn't ground which gets covered by bands these days; one can only shudder to think of how effectively Van Fleet might be able to use actual production facilities to create sonic space rather than simply relying on the acoustics of the room in which he happened to stumble upon a piano. (Click here to buy the first Sparrow House EP direct from Van Fleet. Oh, and don't be a retarded person - just buy Voxtrot and learn to like it.)