The Foals stormed the Bowery Ballroom last night: their performance last night was extraordinary. The band’s showmanship has improved dramatically. The first two times I saw the band play Bowery the guys stood in the tight circle on stage a good portion of the time. And in February they admitted to being rusty. Last night, they were on top of their game, the show was electric, and the audience was loving it. A group of about five drunk, raucous NYU dudes were forcing everyone in the front to dance with them or shove them back. The set included a guest saxophonist; he helped recreate the horn sections of their new album. The sax guy “rocked out” like a Tarantism sufferer. His glasses fell off twice. The band dropped a few tidbits about the meaning of their songs: “Heavy Water” is about vampires and “Two Steps, Twice” is about dancing badly.
From Antidotes:
“Cassius”
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NME declared the Foals will define the music of 2008. I don’t know if that’s true, but the rock photographers were out en masse last night, the cool kids knew all the words to their songs, and their album is actually pretty good. Sounds like a good start to proving NME right. If Animal Collective can be a rousing success, there’s hope for everyone, right?
Which brings us to The Epochs. Last night was my first exposure to The Epochs. My friend characterized their vocals as a bad imitation of The Bee-Gees. Maybe the band had an off night, but Kotchy (the drummer) was fucking amazing and seemed to me to be carrying the whole set by himself. Kotchy’s incredible drumming elicited two or three excited responses from the audience. I’ll try not to be too hard on this band. I don’t know them. Their album got a good review. Maybe Kotchy likes the other dudes. But I can’t help thinking he should find a better band. Or the Epochs should recruit a singer to replace the singer-brothers (a la The Bee-Gees). Or maybe, like Vampire Weekend, I don’t understand The Epochs.
You know, it’s like mood music. Music like this is good in bars and clubs where you are too busy talking to the person next to you to pay attention to the lyrics or worry yourself with a distinguishable sound. The vocals are soo distorted and mixed to all hell that it blends in too much with the music- so you’re left with a hazy sound that great in that it’s atmospheric, but there’s not much depth. Much like the BeeGees, because honestly, where they saying anything important in their music- no. Did it get people out on the dance floor- yes.
I sometimes tell friends that not everyone wants to be inspired when they listen to a song (like a Radiohead track will do)- they just want to dance and music like this is there for that. And hipsters are people, right?