LIVE LETDOWNS

Don't you hate it when you get your hopes set high about some band, only to see it live and have everything your imagination had created simply shattered? Mine happened last night with BEACH HOUSE. I absolutely LOVE their music, but the live show was weak. Smoke and mirrors. Heavy on the effects, nothing magical. It goes to show that making an amazing album in your home studio Pro Tools rig is both a good and bad thing. The musicianship of Beach House was at a very low level. I guess it's not their fault, they are just a young band getting attention, and their abilities are what they are, but after listening to that cd and hearing all that swirling beauty, I thought I was about to witness something special. So driving over to the Echo I braced for either lightning in a bottle, or what could be a letdown. Victoria Legrand definately has something, a presence in there, but it's still too shy. The vocals are there no doubt. I was more dissapointed in her partner in crime, Alex Scally, who seemed to be out of time often and uninspired.

The previous night I had hoped to see something equally as unique in the Australians known as THE DEVASTATIONS. They could at least really play their instruments, but I was hoping to get a snapshot at something dark and twisted from down under, like redneck David Lynch music. Instead, it was a bunch of nice guys dropping lyrics like, "My mother, she was a whore/ my father I barely knew/he said hold on" and it didn't register as authentic. They were a good band, but there are a lot of good bands in the world. It's a tough business to be in that's for sure, and it's tough to make a living off of 'good', or even 'great'. Overall I'm just bummed that I had two chances of possibly seeing some kind of personalities, something that builds fantasy - at least in my own mind, but instead I saw some working class acts performing their songs rather than living them.