the rog
06/11/05, 06:43 PM
When I heard last week that Head Automatica would be playing at the Axis on Landsdowne St., I knew that I had to pick up some tickets. I saw them last August and they blew me away. During that show, I never stopped smiling. Unfortunately, the same was not true for this particular evening.
I showed up at the end of The Fury's set so I can't really say anything about them, but I managed to catch all of I am the Avalanche's set. I was not impressed. They didn't seem to be "into it" and at one point had the whole crowd boo a girl who was heckling them. They claimed that they had "driven all night six hours from New Jersey to be here" "without sleep." At some points they were playing their three guitar attack so hard that one or two would go out of tune and create a generally unpleasing atmopshere. Then they covered a Lifetime song (can't remember the title) and acted like Lifetime was some ultimate underground Jersey band. Fortunately they only played a short set.
Head Automatica came on with their usual fanfare. I noticed something different, though: different keyboard player (the old one was an automator collaborator who actually played on the record) different guitar player. [EDITED NOTE: as it turns out this guitar player was in the band before, they used to be a 6 piece. either way, he wasn't the lead guitarist before] Oh well, I thought, I guess bands like this are prone to change. They busted into the set and something seemed off. Darryl's voice wasn't as pure as it was. Now, I realize that he had a flare up of his crohn's since the last time I saw him, but it was the first time that I'd seen Darryl perform that he wasn't pitch perfect. He allowed the crowd to sing at many parts. Herein lies one of my other problems with the show: the crowd, most of whom only seemed to be there to see them play Beating Heart Baby or The Razor (which apparently was a single... I don't really keep up with that stuff.) They were moshing when they should've been dancing and it was easily 85/90 degrees in the club. Too hot to be rubbing up against innocent bystanders.
Musically something seemed off at times, the guitarist's solos felt forced and the keyboard player seemed to still be learning the essential parts. The key change in "beating heart baby" was atrocious and I'd chalk that up to the keyboard player not doing the change at the right time.
The set was pretty solid, they played a nice mix of the first album and a few good new songs. One is called "graduation day" and has a very nice pop-punk-dance feel to it. The next was "Continental Divide" and sounded like a glassjaw tune. The next new song was called "pulling mussels [muscles] from the shell" and was easily the best of the new tracks.[another edited note: this was actually a squeeze cover, and i knew this, because they played it in august] In the encore, they played one called "egyptian mud" (or muck, i couldn't really tell) that had a really slow arabian feel and was about the conflict in the middle east and reliance on foreign oil, as far as I could tell.
I guess that I would've been much happier about this performance if they hadn't so blown me away last august. Overall i'd give it a 7/10, compared to an 11/10 for their show last august.
I showed up at the end of The Fury's set so I can't really say anything about them, but I managed to catch all of I am the Avalanche's set. I was not impressed. They didn't seem to be "into it" and at one point had the whole crowd boo a girl who was heckling them. They claimed that they had "driven all night six hours from New Jersey to be here" "without sleep." At some points they were playing their three guitar attack so hard that one or two would go out of tune and create a generally unpleasing atmopshere. Then they covered a Lifetime song (can't remember the title) and acted like Lifetime was some ultimate underground Jersey band. Fortunately they only played a short set.
Head Automatica came on with their usual fanfare. I noticed something different, though: different keyboard player (the old one was an automator collaborator who actually played on the record) different guitar player. [EDITED NOTE: as it turns out this guitar player was in the band before, they used to be a 6 piece. either way, he wasn't the lead guitarist before] Oh well, I thought, I guess bands like this are prone to change. They busted into the set and something seemed off. Darryl's voice wasn't as pure as it was. Now, I realize that he had a flare up of his crohn's since the last time I saw him, but it was the first time that I'd seen Darryl perform that he wasn't pitch perfect. He allowed the crowd to sing at many parts. Herein lies one of my other problems with the show: the crowd, most of whom only seemed to be there to see them play Beating Heart Baby or The Razor (which apparently was a single... I don't really keep up with that stuff.) They were moshing when they should've been dancing and it was easily 85/90 degrees in the club. Too hot to be rubbing up against innocent bystanders.
Musically something seemed off at times, the guitarist's solos felt forced and the keyboard player seemed to still be learning the essential parts. The key change in "beating heart baby" was atrocious and I'd chalk that up to the keyboard player not doing the change at the right time.
The set was pretty solid, they played a nice mix of the first album and a few good new songs. One is called "graduation day" and has a very nice pop-punk-dance feel to it. The next was "Continental Divide" and sounded like a glassjaw tune. The next new song was called "pulling mussels [muscles] from the shell" and was easily the best of the new tracks.[another edited note: this was actually a squeeze cover, and i knew this, because they played it in august] In the encore, they played one called "egyptian mud" (or muck, i couldn't really tell) that had a really slow arabian feel and was about the conflict in the middle east and reliance on foreign oil, as far as I could tell.
I guess that I would've been much happier about this performance if they hadn't so blown me away last august. Overall i'd give it a 7/10, compared to an 11/10 for their show last august.