Los Campesinos! Live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg

Going to NYC for a show always seems like such a wonderful idea at first…but then in retrospect [after riding the 1:41am NE corrider branch NJT back to Princeton Junction only to find yourself standing in the rain trying to hassle with cab drivers to drive you back to the campus] one has to reaaally think about whether or not that money and time was worth it.  In most cases, the response is pretty quick to come: “Yeah, that was an amazing show…[insert band name] were so great.  Totally worth it.  I’m going to go blog about how wonderful they were.”  But, every so often, you have to brace yourself for the ugly truth (i.e.-you got suckered); unfortunately, that seemed to be the case last night.

Perhaps it was the aimless wandering in Brooklyn trying to find a bar that was cheap (but not too trashy) to get some drinks before the show…or perhaps it was the $2 marble muffin I had prior to the drinks [probably not...it was delicious!], but I have to say that last night’s performance at the Music Hall of Williamsburg just seemed to fall flat for me.

Now…first things first, I should say that I love “Hold On Now, Youngster.”  The production and mixing on the album is great, the songs are catchy, the lyrics are clever, and their Welsh accents are soooo cute!  So, why then didn’t I absolutely cream over their live show?  Why am I not falling in love with this 7-piece spaz-pop version of the Arcade Fire all over again?  

For starters…um, the drummer.  He annoyed me.  This isn’t to say that I thought he was a bad drummer…he was quite good, in fact.  But he came out at the outset of the show wearing only gym shorts.  That seems like a silly reason to dislike a drummer, right?  Well, not when I had seen him come out to soundcheck his drum set only moments earlier donning head-to-toe hipster attire.  What went through his head to convince him that he needed to change clothes for the show?  ”****, I’m going to rock out SOOO hard tonight…I better preemptively take off articles of clothing.”  Good sir, there’s nothing wrong with sweating.  It’s a normal human excretory (and cooling) function.  Embrace it.  If and when your shirt is so drenched with sweat that it hinders your drumming ability then, by all means, take it off.  Plus, I hear laundry is pretty hip these days.

Also, the vocal levels seemed off kilter throughout the entire show.  One of the greatest strengths of the studio album is the clever passing off of vocals between the female and male singers with interspersed yelling from the rest of the band members.  Unfortunately, a lot of this was lost in a live setting.  Every time I wanted to hear more of the female vocalist, she was way too soft.  Every time I wanted to hear the male vocalist, she was piercing the upper frequency range of my hearing with her whiny yelling.  

It was an awful state of matters, which was only made worse by the fact that I could hardly understand the lyrics being sung by the male vocalist.  Sure…they’re Welsh…and frankly, I love the accent on the album, because I can still catch all of the clever little lines in every verse.  However, I could only make out about half of the lyrics last night.  The awkward audio mix and the accents weren’t helped by the fact that the lead singer was so drunk that he was slurring and mumbling for most of the night.  To add insult to injury, the lead vocalist often acted out literal hand motions to his lyrics…un-ironically.  I’m sorry, but if I wanted to see cutes-y hand gestures to song lyrics, I would have gone to a 7th grade karaoke contest.    

But despite all the criticism, I have to say that they are a pretty tight band live, which is no easy feat for a 7-piece pop rock band.  2 guitars + bass + drums + violin + glockenspiel + synthesizer + 4 singers?  Yeah…that was impressive.  But I still have to imagine how much better the show could have been.  And that imagine-how-good-that-could-have-been sentiment is what absolutely kills you as you’re riding the local train back to Princeton alongside sick drunks and passed-out bums.