Built To Spill / Cat Power @McCarren Pool, July 7th

Julie1 and I grabbed some ice cream cones with chocolate dip and then moseyed on up to the front of McCarren Pool quite easily for Cat Power. This was my third time seeing Chan Marshall, having previously seen her first at Town Hall over a year ago, and then five months ago at Hiro Ballroom. As we all know, seeing Cat Power can be a mixed bag; she can be brilliant, or just plain ol' infuriating. Today, Chan seemed to be all business. Gone were the prolonged moments of awkwardness and rambling and goofy storytelling. She spent hardly any time on banter. Perhaps it was the awareness that she was not the main act and was operating under a time constraint. Perhaps it was the summer sunlight flooding the stage. Perhaps it was the lack of intimacy in this concrete venue. Whatever the reason, Chan kept her cool and played a confident, polished set with her small backing band, the Dirty Delta Blues Band. She kept her nervous tics and hair chewing to a minimum. Happily, they barely touched her last album, The Greatest. While I love that album, one of my tops for 2006, (a) I felt nothing could top seeing her run through those songs with the Memphis Rhythm Band, and (b) I was ready to hear different songs. She sounded good this time around. Solid, if not dazzling.

Unfortunately, after Cat Power exited the stage, the assholes aka fratboys seemed to shove their way out of the woodwork for Built To Spill. I think they must have loaded up on beer during the Cat Power set. Looking around the Pool, it was interesting to see what a diverse fanbase Doug Martsch & Co. have. The fratboys were the most prominent, however, and they ended up right next to us. Julie1 and I debated whether to sacrifice our positioning and head for the back, but we decided to simply move away from them a little bit, which ended up being the right thing to do.

Coincidentally, this was also my third time seeing BTS -- last time was just over a year ago in San Francisco at Slim's during my trip out to the West Coast for Radiohead at Berkeley. While I thought BTS were quite brilliant at the small Slim's club show, their multiple guitar layering was perfect for an outdoor venue like McCarren. As I've noted before, the guys are low frills and all business about their music and demeanor. They moved through their songs swiftly, well, as swift as songs with long guitar jamming can be. Their performance was so good, it made Julie1 and me forget about the assholes who surrounded us.

Unfortunately, we missed the opener, Bob Mould, but seeing Cat Power followed by Built To Spill was definitely an interesting coupling that worked pretty well for me, much like last year when I saw Sonic Youth followed by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at McCarren. Cool beans.

Built To Spill @Slim's, June 23rd

(Why didn't I have my real camera?)

Tonight went to Slim's in San Francisco with Amanda and Teddy to check out their fav, Built To Spill. I still don't have huge familiarity with their stuff, but I was excited to see them live again, having enjoyed them once before in a stellar lineup last October at Coney Island with Rilo Kiley, Gang of Four and the Pixies.

We got to Slim's just as the opener was finishing up. Slim's is a smallish place that probably holds 500-600 people, andthe place was already packed for the sold out show (2nd of 3 nights in San Fran). Where we were by the bar seemed pretty hopeless and pointless, so I explained to Teddy the two beer trick that the Britta showed me -- you hold two beers and make your way through the crowd and pretend you're bringing a beer to someone up front. Plus, people get all worried about spillage, so they're usually more than willing to move aside. Teddy held his and Amanda's PBRs oh so carefully, and we followed him close behind in the wake. We managed to get about 4 people deep from centerstage. Awesome!

BTS tonight had 3 guitars, bass and drums, led by Doug Martsch. I find his singing voice similar to Wayne Coyne's of the Flaming Lips, except without any of the pretension. Doug is a different and somewhat kind of refreshing leadman -- no frills whatsoever. Dressed simply in a black t-shirt, shorts with his balding head and beard, he was simply there to rock. The rest of the band was similar in appearance too -- no preening or posing commonly associated with any otherband. Perhaps the boldest detail by Doug was the sticker on his guitar -- a big W with the red circle and diagonal over it (see above fuzzy picture). The band as a whole was all business -- no banter, no smiles. I kinda missed the subtle interactions you usually see during live performances. I couldn't tell if BTS were having fun or not. But the 100 minutes of music they played were solid.

BTS can get kinda jammy, but not in that stinky, smelly hippie kind of way. They have lots of extended guitar solos and use a lot of fuzz and distortion, but vary their sound somewhat too. One of their newer songs had a reggae beat that I remember hearing at Coney Island. And a few tunes verged on the political, one in particular which made good use of the images and video clips projected on this white sheet suspended above and in front of the band while the band simply played an instrumental. Some of their recorded music feature more poppish, catchier stuff, but none of that came out tonight, which was too bad. As both Amanda and Teddy put it, BTS played almost nothing they wanted to hear, but the band still sounded great live.

Our trip back to Oakland was a bit of a pain -- I'm not psyched about the public transportation in the Bay Area late at night. The BART shuts down at midnight so we had to take a series of buses to inch back closer into Oakland. We ran into some drunk doods on the last bus we caught back to Amanda's 'hood and they wanted to pick a fight, but we managed to diffuse the situation. For the next time I come to this city, I had better work on my kung fu!