Worked up so sexual

Just got back from seeing TV on the Radio (TV’s blog) open up for The Faint. TV was solid, but not great. I hope the Young Liars EP doesn’t end up being their peak. On their opener they were channeling Mogwai with this distorted guitar that slowly built over the course of a few minutes. I was really surprised when they sampled themselves playing and started looping it. I’ve never heard anyone else use that technique for their kind of music.

The Faint brought down the house. I had always relegated them to the upper echelon of B-List indie acts. I was wrong. Their live show is second to none. I’ve seen Modest Mouse, Yume Bitsu, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Death Cab for Cutie, Dismemberment Plan and a few others perform in the same venue and none have sounded as good as The Faint did tonight. I had thought it was a limitation of the venue, but apparently not. They also had the best visual and light show of any of the bands I’ve seen play there. A number of video sequences were synchronized to the music and didn’t slip at all. They were tight. Todd Baechle, the lead singer, had a really strong presence on stage that I didn’t expect him to have.

The highlights of the show for me were “Agenda Suicide”, “Paranoiattack”, “Birth”, “Phone Call”, “Worked up so Sexual”, “Call Call” and “Your Retro Career Melted”. The live performances had all the energy of the studio cuts and more. The video and light presentation with each looked far beyond what any indie band should be able to afford.

For me The Faint has nicely filled the void left by the Dismemberment Plan when they disbanded. The Plan never really excelled on their studio albums, but their live shows were excellent. I’m looking forward to more Faint shows.

On another note, it’s been about a year since I last experienced live music from a band. The last show I’d seen was Mogwai in Atlanta, which was excellent in that cerebral, sit-down and melt into the music kinda way. It’s good to have opportunities like this again, and at $17 total you’ll hear no complaints from me. I was surprised to see some folks in DC paying $30 to $60 for the same show.