I'm going to be off in DC for a few days, so I was glad to get the opportunity to squeeze in yet another show before the weekend. So all is well... my only regret is not being able to finish my Updated Best Albums of 2008 so far list. Oh, well. Spoiler alert: the year's finest album (again, so far) is Earth's The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull. And the world's biggest dick in the ear is the Ponytail record.
So, yeah, Oxford Collapse: they're fuckin' good. Their 2006 masterpiece, Remember the Night Parties, is my second favorite album of that year (check the comments section for some serious revisionist history). Seriously, this is what great, great power pop is supposed to sound like, and it's arguably my favorite summer album of all time. As such, I've made an effort to get out to see them at pretty much every available opportunity I've had since I first heard Night Parties in early '07; by my count this was my fifth time seeing the band over that period of time:
1.) February 2007 at Glasslands: notable for the fact that I dragged two friends (one was this guy) to this show, and we smoked a shitload of weed in my car which was parked on Kent while blasting Art Brut's Bang Bang Rock and Roll. For me the show's highlights was the spacy middle section of "Loser City."
2.) July 2007 at McCarren Pool, opening up for Band of Horses (who we didn't bother with). My friend (yes, this guy again) ate so many vicodins that he could barely stand up, so we sat on the far edge of the pool near where they were playing kickball or dodgeball or some shit, far, far away from where we could do any harm. Post show we ate at a Polish place in Greenpoint. The highlight for me was "Burno" segueing into a lengthy foray into Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" that included two dudes playing floor tom. (Pic here.)
3.) August 2007 at Knitting Factory, when they were opening up for Meat Puppets. This guy was supposed to accompany me to the show but after bong hits at his place he decided against it. I wound up getting lost on the way to the show and subsequently missed a lot of the set. "Lady Lawyers" was fucking awesome, though.
4.) Earlier this year, maybe in March, at a loft in the West Village. Yes, again this guy came with me and I bought weed from his buddy. Sadly the inordinate amount of yuppie cokeheads at this party choked up the bathrooms, causing me to miss much of the set's second half, although I remember rockin' out to a saxophone-augmented version of "Visit Our National Parks" while on the line for the pisser.
5.) Tonight. No sign of this fuckin' guy.
(For the record #6 will occur later this month when I catch them opening for We Are Scientists at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Last time I checked tix were sold out for the following night's show at Bowery -- also with We Are Scientists -- but tix were still available for the MHOW show. Checkemoutyalls.)
Got to Southpaw too early and consequently wound up fucking around on my iPod for awhile. (My new phone's vexing inability to download Tetris has meant I've had to resort to playing a shitload of MusicQuiz on my iPod, which is as fun as it sounds.) Fortunately there were a couple of GbV tracks mixed into the pre-show music, so I had that going for me. Shortly after 9, openers Lame Drivers took the stage with some youthful pop-punk rockin'. Whenever a young band plays poppy punk there's always the temptation to brand them "snotty" or "bratty" but these guys were neither: think of them as a rich man's Cause Co-Motion, if that helps. Honestly, they just seemed happy to be playing and their enthusiasm was infectious. Midway through the set they announced that they "used to be from Rhode Island but now we're from Brooklyn" which was pretty frickin' bizarre considering that the two bands I saw last night also fit that description. Odd, no?
Oxford Collapse took the stage around 10 and I was puzzled: I thought they were headlining, but no matter. They started out with "Empty Fields" from A Good Ground before going straight into one of their many undisputed classics from Remember the Night Parties, "Lady Lawyers." Up next was a few new ones from their forthcoming album, Bits (out in August), with several of the songs accompanied by sax. Not going to lie: I had hoped for "Burno" or "Loser City" or "Let's Vanish" but it's tough to even consider bitching about the setlist when the band onstage is putting as much into their performance as these dudes -- seriously, lots of hopping and even some Pollard-esque high kicks! Eventually we got "Please Visit Your National Parks," "Molasses" and "Forgot to Write" (all from Night Parties), so that was cool. The set closed after an all-too-brief 35 minutes with a song from their newly released Hann-Byrd EP... was it "Bikini Atoll"? I can't fuckin' remember.
I decided to skip the headliner, Frightened Rabbit, so nothing to report on that front. Part of me remembered Oh My Rockness mentioning Counting Crows in their band profile for these guys, which even in jest is the red flag to end all red flags, and all I needed to get my ass out the front door and running far far away.
