Live: Valencia, Over It, Punchline and Spitalfield
November 8, 2006, The Ottobar, Baltimore, MD
I caught this show the other night with a friend. I'd heard of the last three bands and heard random tracks, but I wasn't particularly familiar with anyone on the bill that night. The theme of the night was formula, which bands used one and who did it well and who did it poorly.
There was another band (Boys Like Girls), but we arrived just after they finished. I'm usually pretty disappointed when I miss a band, because you never know what you're gonna get. By the time Valencia got a couple songs into their set, I began to suspect we hadn't missed much if the two bands had anything in common. As a matter of fact, it didn't take Valencia long to make me wish we'd run a little bit later that we had. We should have stopped to get some dinner. Anywhere would have been fine, because a bad dinner would have better than Valencia. They were completely competent musicians. They were tight and sharp. The harmonies in the sing-along choruses were as perfect as live music allows. They jumped around. They posed for the audience. Everything was perfect. And that's what really sucked about them. They went to the library and checked out books from the How-To-Be-Emo self-help section and they followed it to the letter. They even had a song about a "really difficult time we went through." Maybe we should invent a new term for this stuff. Call it maudlin-core. What Valencia did, they did perfectly. Unfortunately, it was perfectly worthless. They are the Loverboy of emo: Everything is by the book, making it hollow, dull and just generally limp.
Over It came on next. What's interesting is that they were the biggest band on the bill. After they played, I figured out why they played third and not last: their average fan had a curfew to meet. After Over It played, 2/3 of the club cleared out and we could actually tell that we weren't the only two people there old enough to drink. These kids that left after Over It were a generally clean crowd too, much closer to what I saw the time someone talked me into seeing Hootie and the Blowfish (give me a break, it was free!) than to what I find at the kind of show I typically see. That's fine, but it was also a pretty non-responsive crowd despite clearly being there to see this band. Over It did their best to get the fans excited. They put on a solid show and had a lot of energy on stage. But they suffered from the same reliance on formula that Valencia did, only Over It did it better. If Valencia is Loverboy, than Over It is Bon Jovi.
There was a decided shift after the first two bands. The crowd changed. The bands changed. The mood changed. Valencia and Over It were essentially pop bands, with a whine. Much like modern country is pop with a twang or hair metal was pop with a guitar solo. The self-conscious, forced performances of Valencia and Over It gave way to a more relaxed and satifying atmosphere.
Punchline isn't a great band, but they were a refreshing change after the formula and polish that preceded them. As a matter of fact, it was the looseness of their set, with bits of improvisation and a genuine good spirit, that made them so much better live than on their latest album, 37 Everywhere. There was no posturing, no posing and best of all no text book to their set. There was a little too much banter for my taste, but at least it was down to earth and funny. Just when I was ready to blow the night off as a waste, Punchline saved it. They made the time and money I spent at the Ottobar that night worth it. I can't say I'd suggest running out and buying their album, but they're definitely worth catching if you get the chance. They were the first band of the night that played for the music, not for themselves.
The night finished up with Spitalfield who fell somewhere between the straightforward honesty of Punchline and the rehearsed polish of Over It. By the time they came on, the audience had diminished to maybe 20-30 people, but Spitalfield played like it was a packed club. That's the sign of a good band. They play their music for its sake and it doesn't matter how many people are there. They were tight throughout, varying between moody emo-ballads and fast hardcore-ish rock. While they didn't have Punchline's ability to connect, they certainly focused on the music more than the image. They also get a bonus for forgoing the encore, especially considering the crowd's minimal enthusiasm. It was a shame they didn't get better a better reception. I believed them when they played and that alone is so much more than I could say for Valencia who the crowd couldn't get enough of. Spitalfield and Punchline breathed a lot of life into a quickly suffocating evening of music and I thank them for that. Otherwise, it would have been a long evening of making fun of how fake Valencia came across or how Over It's singer reminds me of Richard Simmons. Those jokes would have worn thin almost as quickly as the bands they're about.
I caught this show the other night with a friend. I'd heard of the last three bands and heard random tracks, but I wasn't particularly familiar with anyone on the bill that night. The theme of the night was formula, which bands used one and who did it well and who did it poorly.
There was another band (Boys Like Girls), but we arrived just after they finished. I'm usually pretty disappointed when I miss a band, because you never know what you're gonna get. By the time Valencia got a couple songs into their set, I began to suspect we hadn't missed much if the two bands had anything in common. As a matter of fact, it didn't take Valencia long to make me wish we'd run a little bit later that we had. We should have stopped to get some dinner. Anywhere would have been fine, because a bad dinner would have better than Valencia. They were completely competent musicians. They were tight and sharp. The harmonies in the sing-along choruses were as perfect as live music allows. They jumped around. They posed for the audience. Everything was perfect. And that's what really sucked about them. They went to the library and checked out books from the How-To-Be-Emo self-help section and they followed it to the letter. They even had a song about a "really difficult time we went through." Maybe we should invent a new term for this stuff. Call it maudlin-core. What Valencia did, they did perfectly. Unfortunately, it was perfectly worthless. They are the Loverboy of emo: Everything is by the book, making it hollow, dull and just generally limp.
Over It came on next. What's interesting is that they were the biggest band on the bill. After they played, I figured out why they played third and not last: their average fan had a curfew to meet. After Over It played, 2/3 of the club cleared out and we could actually tell that we weren't the only two people there old enough to drink. These kids that left after Over It were a generally clean crowd too, much closer to what I saw the time someone talked me into seeing Hootie and the Blowfish (give me a break, it was free!) than to what I find at the kind of show I typically see. That's fine, but it was also a pretty non-responsive crowd despite clearly being there to see this band. Over It did their best to get the fans excited. They put on a solid show and had a lot of energy on stage. But they suffered from the same reliance on formula that Valencia did, only Over It did it better. If Valencia is Loverboy, than Over It is Bon Jovi.
There was a decided shift after the first two bands. The crowd changed. The bands changed. The mood changed. Valencia and Over It were essentially pop bands, with a whine. Much like modern country is pop with a twang or hair metal was pop with a guitar solo. The self-conscious, forced performances of Valencia and Over It gave way to a more relaxed and satifying atmosphere.
Punchline isn't a great band, but they were a refreshing change after the formula and polish that preceded them. As a matter of fact, it was the looseness of their set, with bits of improvisation and a genuine good spirit, that made them so much better live than on their latest album, 37 Everywhere. There was no posturing, no posing and best of all no text book to their set. There was a little too much banter for my taste, but at least it was down to earth and funny. Just when I was ready to blow the night off as a waste, Punchline saved it. They made the time and money I spent at the Ottobar that night worth it. I can't say I'd suggest running out and buying their album, but they're definitely worth catching if you get the chance. They were the first band of the night that played for the music, not for themselves.
The night finished up with Spitalfield who fell somewhere between the straightforward honesty of Punchline and the rehearsed polish of Over It. By the time they came on, the audience had diminished to maybe 20-30 people, but Spitalfield played like it was a packed club. That's the sign of a good band. They play their music for its sake and it doesn't matter how many people are there. They were tight throughout, varying between moody emo-ballads and fast hardcore-ish rock. While they didn't have Punchline's ability to connect, they certainly focused on the music more than the image. They also get a bonus for forgoing the encore, especially considering the crowd's minimal enthusiasm. It was a shame they didn't get better a better reception. I believed them when they played and that alone is so much more than I could say for Valencia who the crowd couldn't get enough of. Spitalfield and Punchline breathed a lot of life into a quickly suffocating evening of music and I thank them for that. Otherwise, it would have been a long evening of making fun of how fake Valencia came across or how Over It's singer reminds me of Richard Simmons. Those jokes would have worn thin almost as quickly as the bands they're about.
posted by bob_vinyl at 10:52 AM
3 Comments:
glad to see you doing this again...anything that sounded like Richard Simmons is going to have me crying. Laughter or weeping, I dunnno, but it is painful nonetheless!
I reviewed Valencia for Impose magazine and I thought the same as you, really well-done, perfectly in harmony for the Yellowcard crowd, and I let it be at that. Does it suck? For fans of that stuff, absolutely not. For fans looking for mold-breaking material? You betcha.
Hootie and the Blowfish? Dude... if all your friends were jumping off a bridge because it was free, would you jump, too?
But it was freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee... (splat)
(Hmmm... actually, it's not fair to people who jump off bridges to compare them to Hootie fans. Sorry, bridgejumpers.)
And don't even bring up that N'Sync show I saw. I had a damned good reason for that and you know it. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP, I'M NOT LISTENING, BLAH BLAH BLAH.
Ray - If you haven't had your fill of bad emo, I agree that Valencia is a good band, but I think it'd be hard for either of us to imagine not having had our fill of that stuff!
Chuck - Listen to this: You're a dork.
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