What A Waste

Sonic Youth @ McCarren Park Pool 8/11/2006
Incinerate / Reena / Catholic Block / What A Waste / Mote / Do You Believe In Rapture? / Turquoise Boy / Rats / Jams Run Free / Pink Steam // The World Looks Red / Shaking Hell

Sonic Youth “The World Looks Red” –

Pros:

1. McCarren Park Pool is a fantastic venue, especially when the weather is as ideal as it was in New York this weekend. The sound is surprisingly good, as are the sight lines, and it seems like the venue undersold the show to limit overcrowding, which was awfully considerate of them.

2. After a decade of seeing Sonic Youth at a rate of about once or twice per year, I finally got to see them play “Mote,” which is an incredibly common song on most tours, though they normally opted for “Eric’s Trip” whenever I was around. It ruled, as did the subsequent performance of “Do You Believe In Rapture?,” which was the prettiest, most delicate thing I’ve ever seen the band play live.

3. Also, oh my God, “The World Looks Red”! I was thinking not too long ago that they ought to bring that one back, and I’m so glad that they did. I’m not totally sure if this was the first time they played it on this tour, but either way, it’s been missing from setlists since the Washing Machine era, and it totally destroyed the original album recording, though that’s probably not too shocking.

4. Mark Ibold! Dude hasn’t aged a day since the Terror Twilight tour, apparently. (Though he has thankfully abandoned the little goatee from that period.) Mark still looks totally beatific whenever he’s on stage, as though he’s fully aware that he somehow lucked into playing in two of the five or six greatest bands to ever exist on the planet and he’s not sure how that happened.

5. “Jams Run Free”! See the previous entry.

(Click here to buy it from Insound.)

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs @ McCarren Park Pool 8/11/2006
Fancy / Rich / Honeybear / Machine / Gold Lion / Phenomenon / Art Star / Mysteries / Cheated Hearts / Miles Away / The Sweets / Maps / Turn Into // Y-Control / Poor Song / Date With The Night

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps (Live at the Roseland Ballroom 2006)” –

Cons:

1. Thanks to the effing Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Sonic Youth played about 30-40 minutes less than their normal set time in their long-awaited hometown shows. On top of that, the tickets were more expensive than usual, and Sonic Youth fans basically paid 30% more for 30% less. Hopefully SY will book some proper headlining shows in NYC in the fall so that their hardcore base can get a full gig.

2. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were wildly inconsistent and played a very poorly paced setlist that cut out too many of their good songs (“Way Out,” “Our Time,” “Mystery Girl,” “Bang,” “Modern Romance”) in favor of unlistenable duds from the new album, and shunted most of the better songs to the final third of the set rather than spreading them out through the show. They played far too many dirges, which were especially grating when you were forced into realizing that had essentially stole the time from Sonic Youth, and were making you sit through crap like “Fancy” when you should have been hearing “Schizophrenia” or something.

3. I’m never going to stop hating that song “Art Star.” Oh my God, so dreadful. (On the bright side, “Y-Control” and “Maps” were pretty awesome.)

4. Going on immediately after one of the best bands in history did not flatter the YYYs at all — if they knew what was good for them, they would have insisted on going on before Sonic Youth both nights rather than alternating the headline slot. Whereas bands like Wilco, The Flaming Lips, Pearl Jam, and R.E.M. have the fanbase, history, chops, and general gravitas to relegate Sonic Youth to a subordinate or co-headlining role on a bill, the YYYs simply do not, and almost certainly will not ever. This is not to say that they suck — they definitely have a handful of great songs and Nick Zinner and Brian Chase are both very good musicians — but they were hopelessly outclassed, and playing after a bunch of geniuses still going strong in their third decade together just made their set seem unnecessarily flimsy and amateurish, whereas if they were playing with most any random band from their own generation, they would have looked more like the rock stars that they so desperately want to be, and not like a so-so group with an annoying lead singer.

5. Unrelated to the YYYs, but opening act Blood On The Wall were pretty decent, but inexplicably opted not to play “Mary Susan,” their best song by a considerable distance. Why do small bands like that so often make these sort of boneheaded decisions, especially when they are playing in front of a very large audience and have a lot to prove?

(Click here to buy it from CD Universe.)