Tapes, Cards play well
Published Oct. 20, 2006
The Foundry Field Recordings is by all means a pretty good band, and probably nice-enough dudes, but the band had the misfortune of opening for Tapes 'n Tapes Thursday during the middle-half of the Cardinals game.
They started great: Their rumbling, brooding, elephant-stomp rock built layers on top of itself before crashing, starting all over again and then evolving into a dirtier Death Cab for Cutie. But it was to no avail, as anyone within eyeshot of Mojo's lone television had more important matters to deal with (Albert Pujols, etc.). They're local guys, and to their credit, it seemed that they accepted the fact that they could've brought out 2Pac on bass and roughly half of the crowd wouldn't have batted an eye.
Even unluckier were Cold War Kids, who opened their set in the middle of the Cardinals epic, ninth inning near-meltdown. While the back-half of the bar had at least one eye on the game and one eye on the stage during Foundry Field Recordings' set, Cold War Kids played to a crowd of about half of whom were hardly even looking at them.
But, when the Cardinals put the Mets out of their misery, Cold War Kids seemed to benefit from the moment. Their booze-drenched bluesy-noise rock is the type of music you like to hear when you're drunk (I wasn't) and your team wins (mine didn't). So though some people thought they "fucking rocked," I wasn't one of them. They've made a name off of notoriously raucous live shows, and they did all they could to physically impose their songs on the crowd. But, from my view it was all for naught.
There are plenty of bands that do new-blues much better than them (The Walkmen, The White Stripes). Their breakout single, "Hospital Beds," received the most bobbing-heads, but the track's sleepwalking organ does nothing for me. They closed best foot forward, with the more guitar-driven "Hang Me Up to Dry," in which these solos sounded particularly pointed. But for as much as people vocalized how great they thought the Cold War Kids' set was, they certainly didn't show it; the crowd was either disinterested, dissatisfied or paralyzed. If the band were smart, it would have covered "We Are the Champions."
While Cold War Kids' set was rather similar to their actual recordings, Tapes 'n Tapes' set was not. Mojo's mix was off - the bass was so high that it was literally bone rattling, in turn nearly drowning out every other instrument. But for a band that is rather polished, the mix added a different element to its sound. Except for "Insistor," which has an exceptional hook that needed room to breathe, the bass added weight and urgency to Tapes 'n Tapes' straight-ahead indie rock.
All told, Tapes 'n Tapes are by no means dynamic performers. Their set Thursday night was solid, confident, tight but unspectacular. Mojo's mildly buzzed after the show, but it was probably just the Cardinals.