June 18th, 2007 1:00pm
Just A Palindrome
A Sunny Day In Glasgow @ The Carriage House 6/15/2007
Laughter (Victims) / Our Change Into Rain Is No Change At All (Talkin’ ‘Bout Us) / The Best Summer Ever / Lists, Plans / A Mundane Phone Call To Jack Parsons / Things Only I Can See / C’mon
The Carriage House isn’t a “real” venue. It’s an annex to an industrial building that has been transformed into a makeshift loft apartment despite not being zoned for residential usage. The living room is also a practice space, and the bands on the bill played on the opposite side of the room from a slightly David Fincher-esque kitchen area. If it were not for a large courtyard area just outside, hosting a show like this may have been a bit unworkable, but as it was, people could just hang out outside between sets. The show was $5, you could get a beer for $2, and the audience was uniformly cool and friendly and I wish I’d had the time or opportunity to talk to everyone there. I wish more shows were like this.
Weird, unexpected thing: The first band, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, are an indie pop trio that includes two of my friends, but I didn’t know that either of them were in a band, or that they knew one another. The third band, My Teenage Stride were fun and really got people going, but I’ll come back to them some other time.
A Sunny Day In Glasgow “Lists, Plans” – A Sunny Day In Glasgow are a different band every time that I see them. This time they were missing one of the singing sisters, and had an entirely different rhythm section. They were a little bit sloppy, but the set had a somewhat off-kilter sound to it that echoed the effect of their studio recordings while sounding slightly different. The songs, most especially “Lists, Plans” and “C’mon,” seemed more like dream versions in which the song is there, but the memory of it is incomplete and the elements are exaggerated, conflated, or confused. I remember the bass being very prominent, and Lauren Daniels hitting keyboard samples of her sister’s voice that sounded more like otherworldly noises than harmonies, and that Ben Daniels was playing guitar, but it only occasionally sounded like one. (Click here to buy it from Notenuf.)
Arthur & Yu “There Are Too Many Birds” – I’ll admit that I liked this song right away in part because it’s central guitar parts echo two songs that I love very much — Electrelane’s “Enter Laughing” and …Trail of Dead’s “Source Tags and Codes” — but even if it weren’t for the familiar feeling, it’s hard to imagine this feeling anything other than relaxed and cozy. The song has a laid back pastoral quality, but the band don’t push that angle too hard. It sounds kinda like a mellow Yo La Tengo tune, but without the noise and neuroses. (Click here to buy it from Hardly Art.)
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