Handsome Furs, The Cinnamon Band, and The Monolators at The Echoplex, Thursday 11 June 2009

I've been listening to last.fm a lot at work, since it's obviously far easier and a better long-term strategy on the whole than trying to get all my music onto my work computer, and one band that's been coming up with some frequency that I've liked a lot is Handsome Furs, which is why I bought this ticket.

Came in toward the beginning of The Monolators. They are kind of garage-y, and from L.A. What some members might lack in technical accuracy, they make up as a group in fun-having enthusiasm. The very tall singer heroically powered through the recurring problem of an unsteady microphone stand. Some guitars were dropped / thrown around at the end of the set. At first I thought the droppers / tossers were just kind of clumsy, but then the one guitar player went on this defensive jag about smashing guitars being cool and rock and roll, and then I was over them.

The Cinnamon Band, with their terrible terrible name, played next, and they were a lovely surprise of an opening band. They are two guys from Virginia who play guitar and drums and make harmonies prettier than anything you'd expect from looking at 'em. The music was straightforward and, dare I say it, wholesome, and the drummer is really good. I have been homesick lately, and that probably played its part, but I felt like in some other lifetime I might have them over for dinner. A group of howling Virginians came out to support them. I bought their $5 EP, but the EP is not nearly as enjoyable as I remember the band being -- maybe they'll up the game for the full-length. Regardless, I'd go see them again.

Handsome Furs was mixed way too freaking loud. I get that it's supposed to be painfully loud, aesthetically speaking, an amped-up howl against These Dark Times, but I was at the back of the stage area with my plugs in, and it was rattling my clothes. After audience pleas to the stage, the vocals were finally brought out big enough to be heard over the din following the second song, but it was all pretty much academically Big Mass of Loud at that point. I have no fear of high decibels, but I do think they have to be earned, and these I fear were not.

It must be very difficult when one very talented musician-type person with some respectable unit sales under his or her belt decides to make a band with his or her spouse, regardless of that spouse's abilities. I couldn't see very well from where I was standing, so I really can't speak to how much of the electronic noise this particular spouse was actually generating and manipulating live, but Dan B. talked specifically about her awesomeness no fewer than three times from the stage, and she certainly danced about most enthusiastically.

It could be that I was particularly underwhelmed by the Handsome Furs' set because of the juxtaposition with The Cinnamon Band. TCB put my slippers on and eased me into a well-worn audio recliner with a cold domestic beer, and then Handsome Furs wanted to jerk me up into some white leather boots and whisk me off to a flailing '80s cocaine nightmare dance party. Can't do both on the same night, friends! No matter the considerable merits of the individual bands, it was a pretty awkward bill in aggregate.