Review: Concerts From Last Weekend

I was lucky enough to see several bands perform live last weekend. Lizzy and I saw Frightened Rabbit at the First Unitarian Church on Friday and Grizzly Bear at Dickinson College on Saturday. Here are my thoughts:

As previously stated, the FR show was at the FUC, a fine place to see a concert. It's small, the sound quality is always good, and the crowds are generally pretty enthusiastic. Two bands played before FR-Bad Veins and Maps and Atlases. Bad Veins are two guys-a drummer and a guitarist. Upon seeing their name, I remembered reading about them in the Target employee newsletter (back when I worked at Target) that they won some sort of Target battle of the bands. As expected, they sounded like the the Killers and the Bravery and those types of bands. They weren't bad-they were just a little boring. Maps and Atlases are a four piece math rock band. I liked them. The singer/lead guitarist had some really good guitar licks up his sleeve, and it was really cool to watch the rest of the band fall into place with him. Frightened Rabbit lead singer Scott Hutchinson was watching from the floor during their set, and he talked to everyone who came up to him and posed for pictures with people. I thought that was pretty cool. His band came on after, and they were really good. They played their asses off, and it was clear that they weren't mailing the show in. We were in the back until about 2/3 of the way through their set, until I felt compelled to push my way to the front when they started playing "Nothing Like You." Later Lizzy would tell me that the people we pushed aside looked really pissed off. Sorry, dudes. It was much more fun jumping around with the 18 year olds than standing in the back with the 30 year olds. They played all of their best songs, including my personal favorite "Head Rolls Off." The most memorable event of the night occurred as we were walking to the car. Scott Hutchinson was walking down the street, and as he was passing I said something like "Great set, thanks for coming here." He said "Thank You" and kept walking. Lizzy, residing in an alternate universe like always, didn't realize it was him until he had passed. "Wait, that was the lead singer?" "Yeah, dude." Hutchinson was already half a city block away, but that didn't stop her. She did her little Lizzy sprint and caught The Modern Leper himself. And she didn't just say "Great Show." She asked him for a hug. And they hugged. And it was beautiful.

Next night was Grizzly Bear at Dickinson College. See my previous post to learn how we found out about this show. I'm usually pretty wary of shows at private colleges (coughMessiahcough) but Lizzy and I decided that the Grizzly Business was too good to pass up. Andrew Von Novak was present as well, and he had some sound musical knowledge to contribute. Lizzy had a Spice Girls t-shirt to contribute. Both Grizzly Bear and opening act The Morning Benders had some great tunes to contribute. The Morning Benders sound like Grizzly Bear junior to me, which still makes them a good band because Grizzly Bear are a great band. They played a nice set and ended with the breezy "Excuses," their best song. The whole crowd was "dum dum"-ing and singing along. Then Grizzly Bear came on. They were as good as I hoped they would be, playing material from their most recent album as well as Yellow House. They covered everything from "Two Weeks" to "Colorado," and closed with some awesome re-worked old song that I didn't know. After watching them play live, I've concluded that drummer Chris Bear is the MVP of the band. He played the drums with an intense passion, one that I'm sure inspires the rest of the group.

S'all for now...