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CinePhillyist
CinePhillyist Reviews... The Men Who Stare at Goats
...because seriously, whatever brand they're using in their microphones right now sucks. But we'll get to that eventually, because we weren't at the TLA last Tuesday night just to see Alkaline Trio (MySpace). We were also there to see the opening act, The Fashion (MySpace). We were more or less completely psyched for this show, because we've become pretty big Alkaline Trio fans over the course of the last year, and we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of The Fashion's recent album. But our evening got off to a pretty inauspicious start, and we couldn't help but walk away from the show disappointed.
Firstly, we don't know who picks the seating arrangement for concerts—the venue or the band—but the setup at the TLA was completely ridiculous. We got there early (6:25 p.m., when the doors opened at 6:00 and the first of the evening's three bands didn't go on until 7:00) so that we could get seats in the bar area or the balcony. Editor Jill has a less-than-stellar back, and this Phillyist's knees are nothing to write home about. We got to the venue after only a handful of other people, so getting a seat shouldn't have been a problem, except that some genius decided it was a good idea to remove all of the seating from the balcony, and all but about a dozen stools from the downstairs bar area (which were filled by the few people who actually beat us to the venue). That meant four hours straight on our feet, which, not to sound like an old fart, can literally be a painful experience. On top of that, it was a sold-out show, which meant that the venue, while borderline empty when The Fashion came on stage, was absolutely elbow-to-elbow packed by the time Alkaline Trio came on at 9:00 p.m. If the stools were removed to make room for the over-capacity crowd, then we're pinning it on the band—the concert should have been moved to a larger venue. And unfortunately, the discomfort of the venue clouded our whole enjoyment of the music. Not that the crowdedness was the only thing that got in the way of our having a good time...
When we first heard The Fashion's CD, we were really taken with their funky sound. It just exudes cool. So we were shocked and amazed (not in a good way) when the band came on stage and was anything but cool. Singer Jakob Printzlau's on stage antics—we hesitate to call it dancing, although that's what it looked like he was trying for—were somewhat reminiscent of a person having an seizure. And it definitely got in the way of his singing. Firstly, his lyrics were so slurred that nothing was comprehensible, and second, even if he had been singing eloquently, we were so distracted by the ridiculousness before our eyes that we wouldn't have been able to concentrate long enough to really enjoy the music anyway. At one point, I turned to Jill and asked, "Do you think any of the other guys in the band have ever asked him to knock that shit off?" It was a real shame, because The Fashion's album is very good, but what we saw on the stage last week looked, and sounded, like an entirely different (and far inferior) band. That being said, they probably didn't deserve the heckling that they got from a number of people in the crowd, notably the two douchebags standing next to us in the balcony who shouted "Fuck you" and "Get off the fucking stage," at the end of every song.
The second band of the night was American Steel who played thirty minutes of the most uninspired, unoriginal punk rock we've ever heard. Their set merits no further mention than that.
And, at last, we reached the headliners, Alkaline Trio. By this point in the evening, standing on the concrete was starting to take its toll on our bodies (when the hell did we get old?), but we thought we'd be able to bear through it. The band opened with "Calling All Skeletons," the opening track from their recent album, Agony & Irony, and the capacity crowd was in a frenzy in pretty much no time. As punk bands go, Alkaline Trio are surprisingly good musicians and songwriters, and Matt Skiba has one of the most unique voices in music. Unfortunately, we couldn't hear a damn thing he was singing. It wasn't that he was slurring his words, it was just that the sound mixing was absolutely atrocious, or his microphone was simply spazzing. As a result, we were only really able to get into the songs that we'd already known. (What had drawn us to Alkaline Trio at last year's Warped Tour was that, despite the fact that we only knew 3 or 4 of their songs, we enjoyed their set immensely, in no small part because we were able to understand all of the words.)
The band's setlist was strong, if a little surprising to us, as it included some of our favorites ("Blue Carolina" and "Warbrain" especially) and ended with the wonderfully disturbing "This Could Be Love," but absent were a number of Alkaline Trio's best known songs, like "We've Had Enough," "Time to Waste," and "Burn." Of course, we probably barely would have understood those songs even if they had been played.
We certainly won't write Alkaline Trio off, but we were honestly hoping for more. It may have been the crappy setup at the TLA, or the crappy sound mixing, but our whole experience didn't even come close to measuring up to our expectations. Alkaline Trio will be touring with Rise Against this fall, and if the show comes to Philadelphia, we'll hopefully get the chance to check out that show, and we expect that, in the right venue (though we hesitate to say the Electric Factory) we'll have a much better time.
Image from last year's Warped Tour by author.
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