Friday, February 16, 2007

The Apples In Stereo @ Bowery Ballroom [2/15/07]

Don't ask me how it happened, but prior to last night's Apples in Stereo show at Bowery Ballroom, it had been exactly two months since I had last been to a live show. Between work, travel and other obligations, I was forced to skip a number of shows in December and January (Hold Steady, The Dears, Damien Rice/Glen Hansard, etc.). Before I knew it, two months went by without a show. I'm fairly sure that this is the longest stretch I've gone without a show in the nearly 11 years that I've lived in New York. I don't intend for it to happen again, regardless of where I live.

Maybe it was the fact that I hadn't seen live music in a while, but from the very first song, I fell in love with the opening band, Caspar and the Cookies. Unfortunately, as the second, third and fourth songs wore on, I very quickly fell out of love. And then love turned to active dislike. What started as a really good Byrds/Pernice Brothers/whatever-influence set -- well, one song at least -- devolved into a pretty bad wanna-be Elephant 6 set which simply didn't work. As I texted a friend during the show, I don't think I've ever liked the first song of an opener's set so much only to have the rest of the band's songs be awful. Guess there's a first for everything. Or, as I said, maybe my ears were just happy to hear that first song after a 2-month layoff.

As for the Apples in Stereo, they were pretty great. Nothing earth-shattering, but an energetic, fun set filled largely with songs off of the new album, New Magnetic Wonder, and a bunch of the usual suspects from their older catalog ("Go", "The Rainbow"). The crowd was at or near capacity despite that most of the city's hipster-ati were seeing (or trying to see) the Arcade Fire. And, amazingly, there was actually a patch of people dancing and bouncing around throughout the set, which is more and more rare at New York shows these days. While I'm not usually a fan of dancing at shows, if you can't dance to the Apples, who can you dance to?


1 Comments:

At 2:42 PM, Blogger Instant Blogger said...

Hey, check out our website and see an interview with Elijah Wood and Robert Schneider from the Apples in Stereo. If you like, post something about it! Thanks! Also check out our blog!
www.instanttalkshow.com

-Instant Talk Show Gang

 

Post a Comment

<< Home