magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

Sloan had two New York dates scheduled on their current tour, last night and tonight. I had initially thought about going to both shows, but it was hard enough to get anyone else to commit to even going to one show. And, even then, I ended up going alone. Just before leaving the house I came across an ad in the 'activity partners' section of craigslist, a girl in a similar predicament of having non-committal friends, but it was too late to try and get in touch with her.

I didn't really know what to expect from the opening band, The Kicks, having never heard of them before seeing the publicity for this show. All four of them have my (lack of) haircut. I looked around the audience to see if this is a new hipster thing that I'm somehow unintentionally participating in (not that social validation would change the fact that my hair is definitely in need of a trim), but there didn't seem to be too many similarly coiffed fans. In fact, the only other one I saw was standing along the wall, a few feet away from me, and looked exactly like Dave Grohl, but younger. Although, he and his girlfriend did head backstage towards the end of Sloan's set, so maybe it really was Dave Grohl. Which in any case leads me back into, as you will see, my story:

I had checked The Kicks out online before the show, and they are, as you would suspect, of that breed of new-fangled, old-fashioned 'rock' bands with dumb, plural, single word names. But they don't seem to be reaching quite as far back in the history of rock as some of the others. There are strains of early Nirvana (unsurprising having recorded in Butch Vig's studio with a producer responsible for much of the early Sub Pop catalogue). Some of Sloan's first album. Plus some mid-nineties' pop-punk chord progressions and some eighties' new wave synth lines. Nothing knock your socks off spectacular, but pretty good for what they're doing.

And live, they were quite a bit of fun. High energy, obviously very into what they're doing. And dancy, catchy songs.

Sloan started off with a bunch of songs from their new album, which I haven't heard, but transitioned into a rocking version of 'underwhelmed', and filled the set out with quite a few old favourites. I remember thinking while they were playing that they sounded a little muddy, but upon retrospection the whole show gelled together nicely. I find it very hard not to like Sloan.