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2004-04-17 - 3:35 p.m.
there's a band onstage tonight and every note they play turns its back to you
On Friday night, I went to the Ottobar to see Q And Not U, Decahedron and Beauty Pill. Being a big fan of Chad Clark’s previous band, Smart Went Crazy, I’ve been following Beauty Pill from the beginning and have been itching to see them live since long before they actually started playing out last year. But I kept managing to just barely miss them, finding out about shows a day or two after the fact, and even getting to the Dismemberment Plan’s farewell show mere minutes after BP finished their opening set. And after all that anticipation, and enjoying their first 2 EP’s, when Beauty Pill’s full-length album was finally released recently, I found it a little underwhelming, but I was still looking forward to seeing them live, and just tried not to build any further suspense or expectations around it. Anyway, Beauty Pill’s set was good. A lot of their songs are kind of midtempo and low energy, not really built for live rock but they put it together good, and some of the songs really work well. About half the set was comprised of imaginative new arrangements of songs from the earlier EPs. They had some cool segues to go straight from “Rachel Wallace” into “Cigarette Girl” into “Western Prayer”, sort of as one continuous song, with a reoccuring refrain of the phrase “I’ve become seperated from the product of my labor”. Also, during “Cigarette Girl”, Chad changed the line about “committed suicide” to “voted republican”, and Drew the guitarist took over the lead vocals on “Rachel Wallace”. Overall I was pretty happy with their set, hearing some of the songs live might help me warm up to the album, and I’ll definitely try and check them out again. Beauty Pill's setlist: Lifeguard in Wintertime
Such Large Portions!
Nancy Medley, Girl Genius, Age 15
Here Lies Rachel Wallace
The Cigarette Girl From The Future
The Western Prayer
You, Yes You
The Idiot Heart I’d never head of the middle band on the bill, Decahedron, before, and they kinda killed my beer buzz with their obnoxious loud power trio thing, I had to move back to the bar and get away from them. I’d seen Q And Not U once before, when I saw Welsh’s band The Narrative Life open for them at Charm City Art Space last year, and I was pleasantly surprised by Q’s set then, so I made a point to stick around and see them again. I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to actually getting any of their records, but QANU is a pretty great live band, tight dynamics and lots of energy. I really like how they don’t leave a lot of space between songs, they pretty much keep a constant groove going, often playing off of the riff of the next song before breaking into it properly. The 2 songs of their that I particularly know and like “Soft Pyramids” and “The Washington Monument (Blinks) Goodnight”, were especially good. They brought a pretty big crowd for the Ottobar, lots of energy in the room, I didn’t realize they got that much love in Baltimore. Also, I thought it was cool that they have voter registration forms at their merch table and I made a point to pick one up, since I’m still registered in Delaware. -al
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