The Dears
10 out of 10 - Flawless.
Sunday, May 01, 2005
The Crocodile Cafe
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It’s nine o’clock in the evening on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Blanchard Street on an amazing, warm weathered weekend in Bell Town, Seattle. We enter the relaxed REM owned club, “The Crocodile Cafe.” We walked in during The Shout Out Louds’ set and missed the shows’ opener, Marjorie Fair. The Swedish lads of The Shout Out Louds ripped through songs from their album debut “Howl Howl Gaff Gaff.”
Lead singer Adam Olenius has an uncanny doppelganger appearance of actor Jason Schwartzman of Rushmore and I Heart Huckabees. My first instinct of The Shout Out Louds was toward a love/hate relationship. Their precision guitar-driven, 80s rock was complimented with the sole-female member Bebban Stenborg' who’s Moog playing brought an extreme amount of strength to the bands sound. The bands weakness, or challenging area was that singer/guitarist Olenius’s voice took way to many cues from Robert Smith, (The Cure.) By the end of their set, though the band seemed to have won more love than hate as they kept the audience engaged.
After a brief intermission Montreal’s The Dears took the stage and opened with the first track off their new album “We Can Have It.” The band was tight the sound was great. The lighting was out of this world and as they finished their first song the audience with dropped jaws, realized they were in for an amazing show.
The Dears quickly started performing their Smithesque hit song “Lost In The Plot,” which sounded even more ominous live. They powered through a few more tracks with not a moment to breathe between songs. Murray Lightburn the charismatic lead singer/guitarist was dressed in a heavy black coat, a white sash tied around his neck and dawning a dark brimmed hat, and he was covered in sweat. Lightburn announced the band and made some funny jokes about his profuse sweating and making sure we realized he was a black man from Canada. The Dears drummer, George Donoso III is very muted in volume on their recording of “No Cities Left.” His live drumming is so much more pronounced and, even though tucked in the corner of the stage, he was a key band member to have your eyes fixated on. His drumming style was animalistic at times with chaotic drum fills and crescendos as if he were Hendrix on the drums. The two beautiful keyboardists, Valerie Jodoin-Keaton(keyboards, flute, backing vocals) and Natalia Yanchak (keyboards, backing vocals), were set-up facing each other and gently danced to the music while singing lush harmonies and adding multitudes of textures and coating the dead space with vast amounts of noise between song endings, so the songs would bleed into one another.
They busted through and hour and a half of their dynamic tunes off “No Cities Left,” and prior releases; “Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique,“ and the “Protest EP.” I was attending this show because it was conviently located a few blocks from the Ace Hotel where I was staying to see the Sasquatch! Music Festival and I had pretty low expectations. The Dears rocking hypnotic performance took innocent by-standers, including myself, by surprise with their absolutely amazing live show. After seeing some mediocre live performances at the Sasquatch! Music Festival, I realized The Dears well deserved any of the headlining spots at the music festival. They know how to put on a great show. It’s band like The Dears who make you appreciate seeing live music. I couldn’t recommend better live show to catch.
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