Live Review: Saturday Looks Good to Me

November 16, 2007

The Record Bar

Kansas City, MO






As you may already know, I've been digging the latest SLGtM album, Fill Up the Room, quite a bit as of late. Because of my enthusiasm for the album, I was very excited to see the band this past Friday, so excited that I skipped the Robbers on High Street show in Lawrence (though I did help Nicole interview them, which you can read below), and drove like a maniac back to Kansas City, thinking that if I hurried I would only miss a couple of songs. Amazingly, I made it in time, a few minutes early in fact, but it mattered little in the end. The show wound up being quite a disappointment, leaving me to wonder why I had decided to leave Lawrence in the first place.

The biggest problem with the SLGtM show was the electricity. Fill Up the Room is a wonderful pop/rock record, but in concert the band focused exclusively on the rock, leaving the pop part lost in the thick, sloppy distortion. Surprisingly, not a single acoustic guitar was used. The band is currently touring as a four-piece, so the lack of an acoustic was probably out of necessity, but the drastic change from dusty, afternoon pop/rock to noisy, Pavement meets Dinosaur Jr rock was a bit too jarring for these ears of mine. Some of the bands louder songs sounded decent, "When I Lose My Eyes" definitely stood out as the best sounding of the night, but the gentler "Make a Plan" was nearly incomprehensible with Fred Thomas' overly distorted guitar loops canceling each other out. Sensing that they were fighting a losing battle with an already lethargic crowd (I was one of two people standing out of about 25), Thomas called the show to an end a song early, closing with perhaps their catchiest number, "(Even if You Die on the) Ocean", a song that might have awakened the crowd some had it not been saved for last. But alas, the battle was already lost. The show ended, I drove home listening to Fill Up the Room, their versions sounding even better having just heard them butchered on stage.