Beck @United Palace, Oct. 8th

Looking much like a rich man's David Spade, our favorite Scientologist rocker Beck Hansen played the first of three nights at the United Palace, where I was less than a month ago. I had better seats this time -- 4th row -- but the sound mix up front was not so good (during a jaunt upstairs for the ladies' room, I checked out the sound from the lower loge and it was really good). Despite the rough sound up front, Bestest Boy and I had a good time seeing the diminutive man and his crew bop through a heavy setlist, which kicked off with his seminal hit, "Loser," much like the time I saw him in Jersey City.

As a performer, Beck seems to avoid spending too much time on chitchat. He ripped through 25 songs in about 75 minutes, including an uneven "rap" set that seemed to experience technical problems with the headsets worn by the band:

Happily, like the last time I saw him, there was a nice acoustic interlude that drew upon Beck's less popular album, Sea Change. I grabbed a video of him performing "Lost Cause":

As a side note, there was a digital timer to the right of the stage, as well as a handheld camera at the foot of the stage filming the action. Perhaps this means the show is being recorded for a DVD or something, which might suggest that the setlist for the next two nights will not be so different from tonight's...

We also caught the opener, the buzzband of the moment, MGMT, who reminded me a lot of the time I caught The Rapture.

Unfortunately, I think their music suffered a little from being in a larger venue like United Palace and probably would be better suited to a smaller joint like Webster Hall, but they still were decent as an opener and I enjoyed seeing them.