Most of what you need to know about Western Birds could be gathered from this photo of Sam Albers wearing overalls, growing a moustache, and playing a flying V guitar. If that sounds like your kind of band in a nutshell, you’re golden. Their love for classic Neil Young was a lot more evident live than in their MP3s. Rock!
Most of what you need to know about The Paper Cranes could similarly be gathered from this photo of Ryan McCullagh wearing a striped shirt, playing vigorous tambourine and singing his heart out. There was so much dancing that I started giving nicknames to people on the dancefloor (The Mod Couple; Tough-Step and her friend Steppin-Tough; The Erotic Cement-Mixer…). It was a lot of fun, despite a tuning fiasco early in their set.
Lagoons though, Lagoons I have failed to represent through bar portrait photography. This could be a picture of any band.
They sounded much like their website would have you believe: indie pop with some falsetto singing and some spacey guitar parts. A pleasant opener!
The one thing I explicitly did not take a photo of was the traditional Victorian finale, the multi-band jam at the end of the night. It’s been about five years since I saw one of these productions add anything to a show, and I know that I’d ruin the day for at least a few folks if I showed a photo of five musicians holding beers and singing a Yardbirds song into the same microphone, while some other guy bangs a garbage can next to a keyboard enduring up to three would-be keyboard players at once.
I’m hoping we get a new local tradition soon. All the bands build a human pyramid, maybe, or all the bands make out on the speakers. All the bands get drunk and moon the audience, anything!
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