By Maria Lambert
yes, indeed, she did chip her tooth on the mike. i felt so bad - she was just kind of holding her mouth and looking awkward. she said something like “i’ve never felt like i’m four years old on stage before.” i guess she must have been okay, though, because she played the rest of the show and the night afterward with no appearance of lasting effect.
i have done the same thing, only on my sax mouthpiece - it’s like one of those things that hurts so much you can’t see for about a minute, and then throbs, and then eventually goes away. but it, in short, sucks.
as for the show, it was really good. for opening bands: mirah was really good - i had heard a song of hers on the “group” soundtrack - but the crowd really drowned her out; they were talking incessantly. she had to start a couple songs over because i don’t think she could hear herself.
yeah yeah yeahs were their usual selves - karen o looked like she was dragging big-time - not the usual peppy performance persona, if you’ll pardon my alliteration. i am really not feeling them, although i do think their sound has gotten a lot tighter since i saw them open up for the gossip last year-ish.
s-k was pretty damn great - they seem to have gotten back to jamming a bit at their shows. this ain’t no phish-style aimless noodling, though - it’s short, sweet, to the point, intense. janet’s drum solo was kicking hard - usually i think of drum solos as this very arena-rock self-congratulatory exercise in testosterone, but it was like janet was mocking that idea and outdoing it all at the same time, it was really fun, especially the epilepsy-inducing strobe-lights coming into effect. plus, since the crowd was, let’s say, reticent to dance, carrie started rocking out during the drum solo. wow.
as for set list: i did not keep one, perhaps someone else can contribute in this department. was really happy to hear “promised land” by bruce as an encore - carrie asked “who are the four people in the crowd who knew that song?” and i sort of half-heartedly raised my hand, because i could only make out a couple of the hooks and half the chorus - the sound was being weird, as it can be at irving plaza (grrr irving plaza).
the songs were most of the usual suspects from one beat, a good helping of dig me out, a sprinkling of hot rock, and a quick dash of call the doctor - very little of ahotbo, incidentally. a particularly on-fire “little mouth” - i felt like i was going to seize with all the energy.
in sum, an excellent show - so much afterglow, i could barely sleep that night. outdone only by the show last night for nyu students and a few lucky others. but that’s for another review - one i keep accidentally deleting right before finishing the last sentence. damn.
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