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Café du Nord March 20, 2001 Café Du Nord has always been a baaaad place for us to hang out, alcoholically speaking. We should've realized the first tell-tale sign of an impending bender: conveniently forgetting the beer we had with dinner. Consequently, beer two made us buzzy when it just should've taken the edge off, beer three made us forget that we had to be at work the next day, beer four made us forget that we were visible, (and audible) to others, and beer five made us paranoid and weepy. How constructive. Oh wait, there was music too! Sorry... Local boys Planets West were first up and we noticed immediately that the sound quality was far better than the last time we saw them, which was great news. Roughly translated, this meant that there was more definition to the slower songs and more power in the noisy ones. Lovers of a ribald poppy romp, those Planets West boys are. Rumour has it that their lead singer Mike hates to sing, but he sounded good to us. Considering that his ex-girlfriend was in the house, he held things together fairly well. We recommend seeing them very soon, as they will be disbanding when Mike moves to Canada. So, see them! Do it! Because we say so. 'Nuff said. The lovely acoustics also gave us an upgraded set from Modesto kids Built Like Alaska. Look, let's skip the "Modesto Chic" thing once and for all, ok? Built Like Alaska (or BLA) has huge amounts of potential, regardless of some regional fad. "Come on", we hear you say, "BLA and Grandaddy and even say, Fiver are guitar bands with keyboards and tenor-ranged singers! What's the difference?" Not to over-analyze, but scope and intent are the first things that jump to mind. Because where Grandaddy offers a snapshot of a forest, BLA are giving you the detail of a single blade of grass. They've chosen to make their songs smaller, more concentrated microcosms both musically and lyrically. Live, their lead singer/guitarist Neil seems to work pointedly at bringing out the quick volume changes that Squid sorta thinks is their trademark. Please check out their recent EP, "This Song Will Bury You". And speaking of lead singers, BLA were pretty heavily complimented by Tim Mitchell, who is coincidentally the lead singer of Pinq. Pinq were far noisier than the MP3s Squid had heard, which always makes her happy. They were so good, in fact, that we felt the need to stay til the last note rang out. Believe us, given the condition we were in at that point, it was no small feat. Remaining vertical at that level of inebriation is hard for us old people, you dig? To let Mike know how boring it is in Canada, check out www.planetswest.com ©2001 playinginfog.com |