XX Merge: Cat's Cradle, Friday 24 July 2009

The Essex Green - Old acquaintance LW was drumming for the band, and doing lots of fun air-drumming at points where the songs only needed his feet.

Spent - I've not much cared for Annie Hayden's post-Spent solo work, so imagine my surprise that I really like Spent. They hadn't played in like 12 years.

Lambchop - Lambchop under ordinary circumstances is fan-freaking-tastic, and under festival-type circumstances, they were even better. They managed to play as a 10-piece (nay, as an 11-piece with SP on second trumpet) on the Cat's Cradle's stage. One regret was the constraint of the 40-minute set; at one point, Tony Crow was clearly gearing up to go on a roll of hilarious Tony Crow patter, but Kurt cut him off by saying that every time they said something, they had to take a song off the setlist. Their last song was a cover of "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads, and it was everything, everything that a cover should be. Kurt even stood up.

(Note: That, Conor Oberst's band, is how a grown man wears a trucker hat and means it.)

Polvo - Then it was freaking Polvo, dudes. They closed with "Can I Ride."

Pipe - One time during a Pipe set in my youth I ended up unconscious on the floor of the Cat's Cradle, and they definitely weren't something I was in the mood to hear after that Lambchop / Polvo one-two punch, so I opted to sit this one out on the smoking patio with some new friends. Repeating audience reports, there were airborne bottles and cans both to and from the stage.

Spoon - On all these lovely Merge compilations I am getting in the mail as part of my XX Merge subscription, I've been hearing some Spoon songs that I actually like, so I was, I thought, ready to finally Give Spoon a Chance. Then they proceeded to play the most boring, crowd-unfriendly set I've ever seen them play, so I proceeded to drink another beer back by the bar with K3 and DP.