03.05.2007 Do Make Say Think / Westfallia

About a month ago, I find out that Do Make Say Think (DMST) is booked to play at Richards on Richards. While this does get my interest level up, it doesn't terribly excite me. For some reason or another, DMST has never been up there with my favorite post-rock bands. I mean, I would admit they were good at what they do, but I would never put them up with Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky or Mogwai. Then again, at the time, I also didn't think A Silver Mount Zion would blow me away, and yet they did. So, Monday night comes, and I hope that I am pleasantly surprised.



Getting to the venue around doors, I'm almost shocked that they let people in at advertised doors. Not much of a line up, but the place would eventually pack right up. 80-90% I think at the end of the show. I wander around killing time before the opening act. One thing that impressed me was that the shirts that DMST were selling looked pretty nicely made. Tagless, uh tags with DMST on the shirts were a nice touch, although the design wasn't subtle enough for me to buy.



Opening the show was local(?) Laptop extraordinaire Westfallia. The premise of his act was dance/trance beats on his MacBook and Midi Controller. His sound wasn't too bad. A couple of catchy beats, but nothing that really impressed or amazed me a great deal.



DMST hit the stage about a half hour later. By this time Richards was pretty packed and growing with anticipation. Onstage were 8 members on stage. It was a pretty packed stage with 2 drum kits on the stage and 2 members of the horns/brass section standing on the drum risers. Most of the drum parts I don't think needed 2 drummers per se, but did add to the spectacle I suppose. Pretty good mix of songs from their albums, they definitely played longer than I thought they would have. Total show clocked in at about 110 minutes with 3 song encore. Decent crowd banter and both crowd and band seemed to be into it. They even made a crack at how they were actually singing on one of their songs and that somehow led to a joke about them doing Journey covers. Still for some reason, DMST doesn't do it for me. I'm sure there were lots of people who left the show in awe. But for me, they're still "good at what they do", which I guess isn't a bad thing

$15 / $20