AXIS|OF|LIVE

The last part of my CMJ adventure was the Sub Pop showcase at the Bowery Ballroom on November 2nd, which promised to be a long and sometimes-exciting evening. The main attraction of the evening was The Shins, who Sub Pop decided to put on at one in the bloody morning (because they could) and the line-up before then was meant to be a star-studded list of Sub Pop’s biggest indie darlings: Loney, Dear, Oxford Collapse, The Elected, CSS, The Thermals, The Album Leaf, and The Shins. The doors opened at 6 PM, the night ended around 3 AM, and I woke up the next day with the plague! This might lead you to ask, was it worth it?

The answer: kinda. Sarah and I skipped Loney, Dear to go eat a delicious dinner in Little Italy, since Oxford Collapse were the first band we wanted to see and they didn’t go on until 8. Sarah pondered while eating her manicotti, “What if Loney, Dear ends up being the best new band of our generation and we’re missing it?” “Somehow, I doubt it,” I replied. So I have no idea how they were. I hear they were good. We did make it in time for Oxford Collapse, a band that hails from Brooklyn, New York, even though the lead singer looked a little Upstate New York, with his beard and plaid shirt. They were decent, a solid indie rock act that reminded me of the type of music I listened to in college. Pitchfork agrees with me there; they called OC “basically an early-90s emo band.” Sarah thought the bassist had “crazy eyes,” and it appeared to me that he’d just done a lot of homework when it came to watching other dudes in bands. He was all about the dramatic moves and poses and, well, crazy eyeball stuff. We were too far back to get any good photos of them, but we moved further up once they were done.

Then it was time for The Elected, who went through a pleasant set of dreamy indie pop. Their lead singer, Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett, was a tiny, long-haired machine, and over the course of their time on stage, Sarah and I compared him from everyone to Beck to (white) Prince to someone’s grandma to Elliott Smith to Sam Kinison. The last reference was mentioned when Sennett grabbed the mic and started shouting into it like a madman. It brought back memories of that Carson performance Kinison did. One lovely number was sung by Nate Greely, who Sennett called an “angel” because of his fair-colored hair. Multi-instrumentalist Mike Bloom entranced us with his weirdly fluorescent eyes.

Then it was time for my favorite girls (and guy), CSS, who I was seeing for the second time in two days. This band never gets old, let me tell you. They’re always having fun, always excited to be there, performing for the crowd. I was standing by the opposite end of the stage from the first two times I saw them, so it was a slightly new perspective. Lovefoxxx’s outfit was much more colorful than it was the day before at Pianos; she wore spandex pants that were rainbow-patterned in the front and leopard print in the back! Also beneath her black and white hoodie was a vintage Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation tour t-shirt. How can you not love this girl? She also had a mysterious phone number scrawled on her arm that you can glimpse in some of the photos below. Who is the lucky owner of that number, we wondered! She kept her antics to a minimum, probably at the request of Sub Pop, but did manage one good stage dive. They played songs that were sorely missing from their set the day before, including “Art Bitch” and “Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex,” which have quickly become two of my favorites from their LP, Cansei De Ser Sexy. They went a half hour or so longer than they were supposed to, which ended up delaying the rest of the evening’s acts.

Sarah left once CSS was done, but I decided to stick it out for the rest of the evening, figuring that if I was lucky enough to get a ticket for this show, one of the most talked-up events of CMJ 2006 (Sarah managed to sell her extra ticket outside the door for twice the price, and she could have probably talked someone up to $100 even– the dude who made the purchase nearly knocked her over when he lunged to grab the coveted slip of cardstock), I was going to stay and see the whole damn thing. I was rewarded at first with an energetic, balls-out performance from Portland-based band The Thermals. They’re one of the most hyped indie bands of the year and their set lived up to all of the praise. I was most impressed by their super-hottie bassist, Kathy Foster, whose fingers damn near flew over her guitar strings, her two-toned curls bouncing along with her feet, held close together and pogoing off the stage floor. The band had a huge number of people there to see them, and they all sang along, like it was gospel. It was one of the most inspiring performances of the night.

Then came The Album Leaf, fronted by Jimmy LaValle and his live band. Now, I’m not saying the set was bad or unenjoyable in the least. They were quite good, and I really dug their ambient sound, as did most of the people around me. One guy in front of me was there just to see The Album Leaf, I think. But I will say that it was a HUGE mistake to put these guys on second to last, at 12:30 in the morning, after five other bands that were at least twice as intense, if not ten times as intense (read: CSS, The Thermals). The music was lovely, but I was falling asleep listening to it. Dear Sub Pop: I don’t care if this is more popular than CSS. Unless you wanted to convince people to leave early and go hope for a glass of warm milk and a bedtime story, this was not the band to choose for the penultimate act. But yeah, they were good. I was still yawning, though.

Then, finally, FINALLY: The Shins. Okay. I had never seen them live before, which is why I really, really wanted to stay and finally catch them. Let’s face it: they’re big, and they’re never going to play a NYC venue as tiny as the Bowery Ballroom ever again. So, I stayed! I was right beneath James Mercer and his skittish self, and I watched and hoped that they would be mindblowing. And I probably should have seen it coming, but they weren’t. They were fine– very nice guys, really. But not so hot. I wasn’t overly bowled away by their new songs, either. But I was happy to hear some old favorites from their first two LPs and appreciated the bit of playfulness they exuded, especially Marty Crandall; he wielded a star spangled scythe during the encore (see the photos below) and claimed that this was the “leak release party” for the band’s upcoming album, Wincing the Night Away, due out from Sub Pop in January of 2007. He yelled to the crowd, “Clap if you already downloaded the album! (applause here) Clap if you downloaded it while looking at boobs!” I ran out right after their encore was over, waited a long time to retrieve my coat, and mercifully caught a cab at 2:55 AM.

When I woke up the next morning feeling as though death had sat on my face during the nighttime hours, I thought, “I should have left after CSS.” Then, “No, I should have left after The Thermals.” Then, “Thank god CMJ is only once a year.”

And hey, I took photos! Mostly of CSS, since they’re my number one hottiezz. Enjoy.

The Elected

CSS

The Thermals

The Album Leaf

The Shins