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Bottom of the Hill March 7th, 2001 Review by Squid Our third DCFC show was part of a label tour for Barsuk Records. We were excited to see them at the Bottom of the Hill again in the hopes that we could revisit the great set they did the first time we saw them there. We're not sure what was going on the last time at the Great American: differently paced set list? Bigger venue? The Castle Yawn? (See Dirty Three.) Happily, they reviewed the hits energetically and delivered tight versions of new material as well. You know, Daz has a theory that by the time a band plays BOTH three times, they're on their way to getting very popular. Sure enough, there was one moment during President of What where Squid could hear members of the audience singing along as clearly as she could hear the band. This is definitely not a regular feature of Bottom of the Hill shows! It may very well be Great American Music Hall from here on out. Random DCFC thought: Squid wants to know why the hell she didn't notice DCFC's similarity to Fiver until now. They even did a 7" together. Duh! This Busy Monster were all good musicians, but their lead singer didn't seem to be enjoying himself that much, and it really affected their stage presence. Theirs is a freeform mix of genres that requires an attentive crowd, and this audience wasn't it. Luckily, they were joined by a mystery guest who changed the mood completely. There were idiots yelling for Death Cab, and he responded, "We're guests in your town and you're being rude. Just for that, I'm going to play one of my songs, and it's very long and extremely obtuse. AND I'm only going to partially tune. That's good enough for you." It was a scathing delivery that gave him instant indie cred with the crowd. He then went on to blow everyone out of the water by doing a fantastic song, "Medicine Cabinet Pirate". Who the hell is this guy? Turns out his name is John Roderick, formerly of a band called Western State Hurricanes, and he's going to be doing an album produced by DCFC's Chris Walla. This guy was seriously great. Quoth Mike, "where the hell was HE during the rest of the set?" Squid expected Little Champions to be garage rock in keeping with the song she had heard. But even though lead singer Becky Harbine did have a cool, rubbery "Sleater-Kinney" vocal going, they were more of a pop group. Matter of fact, there was a song that couldn've been mistaken for a B-52's cover with it's bouncy guitar hooks and interwoven male/female vocals. They improved with each song but it was when Harbine switched from keys to bass that they really took off. The sound thickened and became more like early Throwing Muses with quiet verses that would suddenly descend into bass-heavy noise. We'll definitely try and catch them again, we think they're on to something. Listen to mp3s by all these bands at www.barsuk.com Who the hell is Mike? www.planetswest.com |