Last night I went to Bottom of the Hill(www.bottomofthehill.com) to see MGMT, Yeasayer, and the Morning Benders. This was the first show I went to since moving to San Francisco(NB- This is not technically correct, as I have actually seen three other live music performances over the past 2 weeks, but, last night’s show was the first where I bought tickets in advance and made a conscious effort to actually attend the show).

I guess I’ll just jump right into it. I got in the building after a 10 minute wait outside, which was not bad at all considering the show had been sold out for a week, maybe more. The club had a capacity of 249 people, and the Morning Benders were somewhere in the middle of their set. I had no idea who the Morning Benders were, and while eating dinner with friends prior to attending the show, nobody could say anything more than “MGMT, Yesayer, and some other band,” followed by somebody else remarking “There’s a third band?” and so forth.
To be honest, they were good, and I was really impressed by the tightness of the bass player and drummer really locking in, and I happened to notice the bass player had black X’s on his, which is another prop to him, to go with his fashion style of only buttoning the top button of his dress shirt. They had a Strokes-ish sound, consisting of two guitars, bass and drums, and even did a New Order cover. However, what collective talent the band had was lost on me by the snarkiness of the front man, who made multiple complaints about his monitors and comments to crowd about whether they were interested in dancing. Sorry DUDE, but you hit the lottery by getting this opening gig, probably several months ago, when half the crowd in attendance didn’t even know who MGMT or Yeasayer was. There are probably 300 bands in the Bay area with just as much talent who would be grateful to have your slot. Musically speaking though, these guys brought it.

Yeasayer was next, and I was really only familiar with this one song- Yeasayer- 2080

They had more or less a blank canvas of a fan to work with. Sonically, they reminded me a lot of Animal Collective, and their guitar player had eccentric, angular guitar riffs. The bass was too low in the mix to here at most points, and the drums had to have some effect on them, cause I was completely confused by what I was hearing on certain songs… in a good way.
My disappointment was that the front man looked down and to the side almost the whole set. I understand you guys are avant-garde Brooklyn musicians, I get it, but when you’ve been playing as much as these guys have recently (check out their tour schedule), I expect, nay, demand better stage presence. Bonus points for having a bass player who can be a part of the Social Scene whenever he wants, no questions asked, based on his appearance.



Which brings us to (dun… dun… dunnnnnnnn) the headlining act, MGMT( or management as I say- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGMT)

FULL DISCLAIMER- These guys are the reason I bought tickets for this show. I first heard some of their songs 3 months ago and soon after got a hold of the album, and the album is awesome. It easily made my top 10 albums list of 2007, assuming I have a top ten albums list of 2007. When a friend alerted me to their playing, we immediately got tickets.

Ok, to start things of MGMT is two guys, or at least, the album was. Now they have 3 other backing musicians. After the show, one person in my group made a comment how live, MGMT was more of a rock band. While this is a fair statement, I will say this. I DID NOT WANT A ROCK BAND. Oracular Spectacular has some of the catchiest dance songs I have heard, and all I can say about last nights’ performance was …meh. I don’t want to see white kids who went to an elite liberal arts college in Connecticut and do blow try to be a pseudo glam-rock band. I WANT INDIE DANCE PARTY, that’s what Oracular Spectacular is. I will admit the crowd was pretty dead, just a bunch of people standing there, checking out the hot new scene. The only point when it remotely resembled a good time was during the performance of “Kids” in which it was just the two main guys, accompanied by a backing track, and they only did the 1st verse and chorus before leaving as the music played.

Now, I’m not saying that they were bad, they weren’t, its just not what I was hoping for. I can say, in context, that for $8 and the $3 surcharge, the evening was worth it.

Some quotes from the evening:

“There was alot of reverb on their guitars”- G. McCann- in reference to MGMT
“You have a blog?” B. Mead- in reference to me claiming I will write a review on my blog

Bonus Material

Wow, now way, really, I woulda never thought it
http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Music/01/29/people.spears.walters.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest