Long Winters @ Bowery Ballroom, NYC [9/29/06]

The Long Winters, "Cinnamon" (from When I Pretend to Fall)
The Long Winters, "Ultimatum" (from Ultimatum EP)

Seattle's Long Winters returned to New York last night for the first time in several years. I could be wrong on the date, but I think their last show in town was at Northsix back in 2003. At least that's the last time I saw them.

Anyway, their show hasn't changed too much in that time. John Roderick is still the funniest front man in indie rock. The band still has an incredible catalog of catchy, intelligent songs, which includes several of my favorite songs of the last few years ("Cinnamon", "Prom Night at Hater High", "Ultimatum"). They still play a long set (approx. 90 minutes) with no encore. And they're still hit or miss from song to song. On some songs they sound unstoppable (see "Pushover"), on others they're disjointed and off (see "Fire Island, Ak").

At the end of the day, though, you don't go to a Long Winters show (or any indie rock show, for that matter, except maybe Yo La Tengo) for perfect execution. You go to hear a bunch of great songs played loud and have a good time. And the Long Winters delivered on that again last night.




Two other notes/thoughts from last night. First, John mentioned that the band plans to come back into town in March, so keep your eyes out for that. Second, although the show was sold out (they sold their last ticket at the door just before I got in), the crowd was amazingly subdued. While there were a lot of people yelling out song titles, by the second half of the set, it was so quiet between songs that the room felt empty. Weird. It was almost like the energy of the room disappeared halfway through the set. I hope it wasn't John's (pretty funny, IMO) KKK joke.