HCT: live at the warfield
So yes, I am as surprised as you all: I ended up at the Warfield tonight. Basically, the story goes like this -- work blows all week, I see lovelypoet make a post today about last night's HCT show and in the comments she mentions Jon Walker in a pearl necklace. This makes me go "bzuh?!" and in comments back and forth it comes out that she has another ticket for tonight, with clumsygyrl up in the balcony. As Friday continues to suck at work, I agree to go. Duck out of work at 4pm, stop at home for earplugs and water and cash, then make my way to the city. Somewhere in there is the realization that HCT is not *just* Panic, but also the Hushies, which makes my *GLEE* rise about a million percent.
Text thelionforreal to ask if she wants concert calls. She texts back something to the effect of "I thought you hated Panic?" Run into bexone seated about 10 seats down from me. She posts [ this]. Apparently writing [ this] as a review now counts as "hating" a band. I will admit that I am not the world's biggest fan of AFYCSO as an album, but I *liked* Pretty. Odd., people. It's just an inconsistent album. And they played most of the songs I like on the album, and only played a couple of what I thought were the weaker ones, so maybe they share my assessment? Or maybe they're saving up material for another tour after this one; who knows? Also at the show: schuyler and lovelypoet, who I hadn't seen in FOREVER, as well as lesasoja and Cristen, whose LJ name I do not know, but who is awesome and took orgasm-face pictures of Jon Walker. \o/
ANYWAY. The show. Um. It's a good show! At least, it will be for the next couple months or so, until all the singers lose their voices. I wish I were joking. From a technical perspective, the sound was pretty good except that all the vocals were about 10% softer than they should have been -- still audible, but further back in the mix than I would have liked, especially Panic's, with all the harmonies. The lighting was good too, but tended to be very literal -- really really bright audience-facing lights went off on downbeats and such -- nothing super-creative until the middle of MCS, when there was an ivy-like special, and then a bunch of color changes and upsweeps for Panic.
Phantom Planet was okay -- though not particularly engaging until they pulled out "California" at the end and their lead singer crowd-surfed over the whole pit. But the guy's voice is just... he doesn't have any idea what he's doing with it, and it's not going to hold out very long. Fortunately for them, their set is short. If they end up headlining a tour at some point, they'll never make it through a headliner set.
HUSHIES. God, I love them. I want to carry them around in my pocket all the time; they're so adorable! Also, Darren is HOT. On the downside, Bob is really not made to sing live -- his pitch was all over the place -- and I'm worried about Greta for the same reason I'm worried about the guy from Phantom Planet: she's not using her voice correctly. It could be that her smoky thing is an affected thing -- listen to the recorded version of "Wine Red" versus the live version they do on this tour; the difference is pretty dramatic -- but it may also not be; it's hard to imagine the Greta from Goodbye Blues being the same as the one from Like Vines without something happening in the vocal health department. I just don't want anything bad to happen to her! They sounded amazing, but if she keeps this up, she may not sound like *anything* in a couple of months. :-/
Hushie setlist, gacked from Sky:
Medicine Man
Sweet Tangerine
As You Cry
The Boys Are Too Refined
Crawling
Hurricane
Wine Red
Honey
I was hoping for something off the very end of the album, since I think those songs are going to get short shrift, but they played "Hurricane" and "Honey", so I was happy. They're just so CUTE and HAPPY when they're onstage! And Greta shares a bus with 11 guys! As bexone said after: you KNOW who's in charge on that bus!
Motion City Soundtrack was good, I guess -- I didn't know any of their stuff at ALL. Their keyboard player was HYSTERICAL; he had really long hair and kept playing the synthesizer and headbanging and rocking the synth (on its stand) back and forth. I think it had something to do with the fact that while playing synth you generally don't get the chance to rock out and he REALLY wanted to... :D Their lead singer was having vocal trouble, but coped really well. Their bassist is HOT LIKE BURNING, at least from the balcony. They were really good at getting the audience to sing along with them, and their lead singer is pretty manic; Fi says this is AFTER he got off of coke; I can't imagine him on it.
Then there was an interminably long pause, and then Panic finally played. They were good! I enjoyed their set a lot, both the main set and the encore, and I think I got a little perspective on AFYCSO, which makes a LOT more sense when it's live.
• Brendon was totally manic, flinging himself around the stage like a monkey. He started off pretty rocky on the vocals, but after three songs or so he hit his stride and only flatted a couple of things here and there, which amazed me, given the height of the stuff he shot for and what I think his range actually is. He really surprised me in a very good way. When his voice wasn't working right during NitA, he kept swiveling his head to the side after each phrase; is this normal Brendon behavior? It seemed really weird to me.
• Ryan is just... totally not interesting to me at all. His audience banter was in a monotone, and he has no emotion in his voice, even when he's singing the songs he wrote for himself to sing. He seems fine on the guitar, and I love a lot of the songs he wrote for Pretty. Odd., but goddamn, boy; get some emotion!
• Spencer never missed anything. He was so fucking on it amazed me. I heard complaints from the girls after about him needing to his elbows in (and thus, stop his arms from flailing) or he'll end up like Bob, needing to re-wrap his wrists in the middle of a set, but he blew me away, really. He's all there technically, but he's also really really into the music. And his looooong shaggy hair was tied back by a necktie! Hilarious.
• Jon is just... I don't really have words. He's so HAPPY. God, it's infectious. He's also really, really good on the bass. And as a singer -- let Jon sing instead of Ryan, maybe? I would write more, but it would be incoherent babbling about "JON WALKER, HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?!", so.
Setlist, again gacked from Sky:
We're So Starving/Nine in the Afternoon (fine as an opener)
But It's Better If You Do (kind of eh, but I think it was more Brendon's voice)
Camisado (one of the old songs I liked this time around)
The Only Difference... (also kind of eh)
Behind the Sea (RyRo, get some emotion!)
Lying Is The Most Fun... (totally makes more sense live, plus Brendon's rocking the low voice)
I Constantly Thank God For Esteban (this was pretty awesome)
That Green Gentleman (love this song!)
There's A Good Reason... (I have a negative reaction to songs with "cancer" in them lately...)
Folkin' Around (Brendon alone, no fiddle -- I missed the fiddle, but this was great; still my favorite song on the album)
I Write Sins, Not Tragedies (this is my ::eyeroll:: song, sorry)
Northern Downpour (love love love)
Encore:
Time to Dance (Brendon solo, acoustic, done with the audience acting as keyboard, to hilarious effect)
Pas de Cheval (weird on the vocals - some tradeoff didn't happen right, or didn't happen the way I thought it would?)
Mad as Rabbits (awesome awesome. again with weird vocals, but it totally didn't bother me at ALL.)
As bexone pointed out, this is a short set for a headliner, but it's possibly because they're saving up material for the next tour. Which I will probably go see if only to hopefully catch "When The Day Met The Night", which was not played :(
So, uh, yeah. Long, I know, and it's 3am so I should have been asleep HOURS ago. But a good show pretty much all-around. Also, thelionforreal, honey, if by some chance the last song in the regular set is different on your night (see [ here], can I get a call? Especially if it's "When The Day Met The Night"?
Text thelionforreal to ask if she wants concert calls. She texts back something to the effect of "I thought you hated Panic?" Run into bexone seated about 10 seats down from me. She posts [ this]. Apparently writing [ this] as a review now counts as "hating" a band. I will admit that I am not the world's biggest fan of AFYCSO as an album, but I *liked* Pretty. Odd., people. It's just an inconsistent album. And they played most of the songs I like on the album, and only played a couple of what I thought were the weaker ones, so maybe they share my assessment? Or maybe they're saving up material for another tour after this one; who knows? Also at the show: schuyler and lovelypoet, who I hadn't seen in FOREVER, as well as lesasoja and Cristen, whose LJ name I do not know, but who is awesome and took orgasm-face pictures of Jon Walker. \o/
ANYWAY. The show. Um. It's a good show! At least, it will be for the next couple months or so, until all the singers lose their voices. I wish I were joking. From a technical perspective, the sound was pretty good except that all the vocals were about 10% softer than they should have been -- still audible, but further back in the mix than I would have liked, especially Panic's, with all the harmonies. The lighting was good too, but tended to be very literal -- really really bright audience-facing lights went off on downbeats and such -- nothing super-creative until the middle of MCS, when there was an ivy-like special, and then a bunch of color changes and upsweeps for Panic.
Phantom Planet was okay -- though not particularly engaging until they pulled out "California" at the end and their lead singer crowd-surfed over the whole pit. But the guy's voice is just... he doesn't have any idea what he's doing with it, and it's not going to hold out very long. Fortunately for them, their set is short. If they end up headlining a tour at some point, they'll never make it through a headliner set.
HUSHIES. God, I love them. I want to carry them around in my pocket all the time; they're so adorable! Also, Darren is HOT. On the downside, Bob is really not made to sing live -- his pitch was all over the place -- and I'm worried about Greta for the same reason I'm worried about the guy from Phantom Planet: she's not using her voice correctly. It could be that her smoky thing is an affected thing -- listen to the recorded version of "Wine Red" versus the live version they do on this tour; the difference is pretty dramatic -- but it may also not be; it's hard to imagine the Greta from Goodbye Blues being the same as the one from Like Vines without something happening in the vocal health department. I just don't want anything bad to happen to her! They sounded amazing, but if she keeps this up, she may not sound like *anything* in a couple of months. :-/
Hushie setlist, gacked from Sky:
Medicine Man
Sweet Tangerine
As You Cry
The Boys Are Too Refined
Crawling
Hurricane
Wine Red
Honey
I was hoping for something off the very end of the album, since I think those songs are going to get short shrift, but they played "Hurricane" and "Honey", so I was happy. They're just so CUTE and HAPPY when they're onstage! And Greta shares a bus with 11 guys! As bexone said after: you KNOW who's in charge on that bus!
Motion City Soundtrack was good, I guess -- I didn't know any of their stuff at ALL. Their keyboard player was HYSTERICAL; he had really long hair and kept playing the synthesizer and headbanging and rocking the synth (on its stand) back and forth. I think it had something to do with the fact that while playing synth you generally don't get the chance to rock out and he REALLY wanted to... :D Their lead singer was having vocal trouble, but coped really well. Their bassist is HOT LIKE BURNING, at least from the balcony. They were really good at getting the audience to sing along with them, and their lead singer is pretty manic; Fi says this is AFTER he got off of coke; I can't imagine him on it.
Then there was an interminably long pause, and then Panic finally played. They were good! I enjoyed their set a lot, both the main set and the encore, and I think I got a little perspective on AFYCSO, which makes a LOT more sense when it's live.
• Brendon was totally manic, flinging himself around the stage like a monkey. He started off pretty rocky on the vocals, but after three songs or so he hit his stride and only flatted a couple of things here and there, which amazed me, given the height of the stuff he shot for and what I think his range actually is. He really surprised me in a very good way. When his voice wasn't working right during NitA, he kept swiveling his head to the side after each phrase; is this normal Brendon behavior? It seemed really weird to me.
• Ryan is just... totally not interesting to me at all. His audience banter was in a monotone, and he has no emotion in his voice, even when he's singing the songs he wrote for himself to sing. He seems fine on the guitar, and I love a lot of the songs he wrote for Pretty. Odd., but goddamn, boy; get some emotion!
• Spencer never missed anything. He was so fucking on it amazed me. I heard complaints from the girls after about him needing to his elbows in (and thus, stop his arms from flailing) or he'll end up like Bob, needing to re-wrap his wrists in the middle of a set, but he blew me away, really. He's all there technically, but he's also really really into the music. And his looooong shaggy hair was tied back by a necktie! Hilarious.
• Jon is just... I don't really have words. He's so HAPPY. God, it's infectious. He's also really, really good on the bass. And as a singer -- let Jon sing instead of Ryan, maybe? I would write more, but it would be incoherent babbling about "JON WALKER, HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?!", so.
Setlist, again gacked from Sky:
We're So Starving/Nine in the Afternoon (fine as an opener)
But It's Better If You Do (kind of eh, but I think it was more Brendon's voice)
Camisado (one of the old songs I liked this time around)
The Only Difference... (also kind of eh)
Behind the Sea (RyRo, get some emotion!)
Lying Is The Most Fun... (totally makes more sense live, plus Brendon's rocking the low voice)
I Constantly Thank God For Esteban (this was pretty awesome)
That Green Gentleman (love this song!)
There's A Good Reason... (I have a negative reaction to songs with "cancer" in them lately...)
Folkin' Around (Brendon alone, no fiddle -- I missed the fiddle, but this was great; still my favorite song on the album)
I Write Sins, Not Tragedies (this is my ::eyeroll:: song, sorry)
Northern Downpour (love love love)
Encore:
Time to Dance (Brendon solo, acoustic, done with the audience acting as keyboard, to hilarious effect)
Pas de Cheval (weird on the vocals - some tradeoff didn't happen right, or didn't happen the way I thought it would?)
Mad as Rabbits (awesome awesome. again with weird vocals, but it totally didn't bother me at ALL.)
As bexone pointed out, this is a short set for a headliner, but it's possibly because they're saving up material for the next tour. Which I will probably go see if only to hopefully catch "When The Day Met The Night", which was not played :(
So, uh, yeah. Long, I know, and it's 3am so I should have been asleep HOURS ago. But a good show pretty much all-around. Also, thelionforreal, honey, if by some chance the last song in the regular set is different on your night (see [ here], can I get a call? Especially if it's "When The Day Met The Night"?