out and about in the east village and LES

last night i ventured out once again into the wilds of indie rock in new york city and saw the blood arm, the charlatans uk and lansing-dreiden section ii. all three are pretty different bands...

mike and i stopped by rivington arms to check out the lansing-dreiden art exhibit going on. a lot of their stuff is based on the beauty of symmetry.... almost like very precise inkblots. i grabbed a copy of their literary art paper "death notice" on my way out. it's still in my bag for perusing later...

the blood arm opened for the charlatans at webster hall (hello jay and julia!). i had heard the name before but wasn't familiar with their music. their set started off with some wired spoken artist type ranting a soliloquy about how he came to new york for liberty and acceptance... he basically repeated certain phrases two or three times for emphasis... and then he introduced the blood arm from "los angeles, france" -- whatever that means. so yeah, the blood arm are a band from LA. in fact, they are pretty huge in LA, and i heard they are franz ferdinand's favorite band. this is no surprise as the blood arm are LA's answer to franz. i can see them being a great party band with catchy songs with choruses like "i like all the girls and all the girls like me" but the effect was lost on the crowd at webster hall. i think the space was too big for them to woo a crowd that probably had no idea who the hell they were. they tried to engage the crowd, though not that successfully. the lead singer jumped into the audience several times to dance with people. nobody really budged. in fact, i think i saw someone run away from him. then he started dedicating songs facetiously to people in the crowd after asking for names. "this song is dedicated to regina, who i have fallen in love with." it came off sort of awkwardly. the most awkward part was when he jumped on the bar -- right at the end of the set. i think if you're going to jump on the bar, make sure you have some singing left to do so you can entertain from there instead of just jumping up there for the sake of jumping up there. all in all though, i think webster hall was just the wrong setting for this group. i probably would have been pretty excited to see them play a loft or a smaller venue.

as i told a couple friends last night, the difference between the blood arm and the charlatans uk is like the difference between cocaine and marijuana. one is high energy and spastic and the other is high energy but dreamy. unfortunately i couldn't stay until the end of the charlatans set, but i did manage to catch an oldie -- "can't get out of bed." it made my night, even though i was longing to hear them sing "the only one i know" live. tim burgess still has "it" in my book, though i'm not sure what i think of the newer songs -- let me warm up to it. and is it just me or did some of the songs have a total reggae vibe?

i rushed off to catch lansing-dreiden at annex, a venue i had never been to before. i saw kevin and dave outside and chatted a little bit. when i went inside, the venue was absolutely packed. i saw a couple people i hadn't seen in a while like mihal and morgan. met some nice new people. and also ran into an old-school blogger -- aeki tuesday!

now take into consideration that lansing-dreiden do not perform their music live. they hire a band to convey their musical vision. think of it like an art project of sorts, and it's actually quite interesting to see the fairly quick metamorphosis of L-D Section II. this was something like their fourth live show ever, and i was really impressed with what i saw. sure, they don't have it 100% together yet, but what band does after 4 shows? the interest for me is to see how much they will have grown after they return to new york to bowery ballroom at the end of june with grizzly bear. peeps, i think that's going to be the HOT show to go to. so anyways, section ii is fronted by two black guys who sing beautifully together as a unit and dance sort of like milli vanilli (but note they don't lip sync). at first, this may not appeal to some of you but if you open yourself to the experience, you will have as much fun as the circle of girls shaking their thang in the front last night. my highlights were when they did "disenchanted" and "glass corridor." those are my fave L-D songs.