02.17.2008 Birds and Batteries / Wintersleep / Radamacher

The High Dive is located in the Fremont area of Seattle. Walking around, it resembles Commercial Drive. (Vancouver reference). Spotting a Matt Good gig poster (at some tavern), a couple of things occured to me. For one thing, the 1-200 seat tavern is a far cry from the sold out small to mid theaters he was playing to just last year. (Relative) success in Canadian markets don't always equate to success in the US, or even filling seats for that matter. To beat the dead horse, last night Wintersleep sold out the ~900-1000 seat Commodore. This particular night they were playing second (3 band bill), in front of less than 20 people, with a birthday party headlining the night. I think I may have even counted members of the other bands. I wouldn't be suprised if there were only 10 paying customers for this show.

Radamacher, a four piece band, opened the night playing indie type rock. I don't remember where they were from but I do remember instrumentally they were pretty good. I didn't like the guitarist/vocalist's singing though. It just seemed out of place. They also played 2 cover songs, which was odd, because I always thought touring bands (ones that don't have 'a tribute to' or 'the music of' in their names) left their covers at home.

Wintersleep played about 40 min and looked pretty relaxed in spite of playing for the sorriest looking crowd they've had to play for in about 2 years. They played without a setlist and pretty much decided on songs as they went along. At one point Paul even asked how long they had left to play. This is the first time I've ever seen a show without Nerves or Danse.

Setlist

Archaeologists
Caliber
Weighty Ghost
Murderer
Search Party
Oblivion
Yellow Bellied


San Francisco five piece Birds and Batteries opened their set with a rendition of Neil Young's Heart of Gold. At this point I was thinking, oh gawd, did Wintersleep just open up for a cover band?. Fortunately they weren't a cover band, but they certainly were interesting. They have sort of a alt country / indie rock sort of sound and had a drummer that used laptop loops. This meant they would from time to time, go into electronic techo beat-like passages. As a band they weren't terrible, but their songs seemed to have too much going on. The slide guitar, while nice, didn't add to much to the songs.

Did I mention the night was 'headlined' by a Birthday party.

$10/$6

02.16.2007 Wintersleep / Ladyhawk

Yes I am still alive. After a slow month and a half, 2008 comes back with a killer show at the Commodore. East coast stalwarts, Wintersleep return to another sold out show (rather quickly I might add). Not surprisingly, ticketbrokers were in full effect with single tickets going for upwards to $100. Tonight's show was put together mainly to work around a couple of Japanese dates. Luckily some west coast dates were on the table.

Opening up the night were local Vancouver indie princes Ladyhawk. Despite playing such a large venue for the first time, Ladyhawk felt right at home, literally. You've never seen me write about them because I've never really been motivated enough to get out and check out any of their countless local shows. That being said, I actually enjoyed most of their set. I'll have to give this band some more time to grow on me. Hopefully by the time I'm convinced to see them again they'll still be playing small venues.

This marked the 9th time I've seen Wintersleep. I've been lucky that I've been able to see a non local band this many times in the last 3 years. It was pretty weird seeing them play at the Commodore; the biggest venue I've ever seen them play at (well headlining anyways). I notice that they've got the barricade set up at the front, ends up it's not needed. People seemed content with just singing along and saving the metal theatrics for .. well a metal show. The setlist was pretty similar to the late 2007 shows. The minor differences did keep the show somewhat fresh. Most notably, they opened up with Yellow Bellied; while unlikely, worked out well. Sore was also nice to finally hear live. I've been told that Listen, Listen, Listen was reworked and totally unrehearsed, although I can't say how. Finally, Nerves Normal clocked in around 16 minutes and the jam during Danse Macabre was tightened up. Out of all the shows I've seen they seemed to have the most energy at this show. I think i'll stop writing about here. I've got about 9 Wintersleep fluff posts, I'm sure you get it. This blogger likes Wintersleep.

Setlist

Yellow Bellied
Archaeologists
Dead Letter
Caliber
Jaws of Life
Search Party
Weighty Ghost
Murderer
Orca
Sore
Astronaut
Oblivion
Laser Beams
Danse Macabre
==========
Listen, Listen, Listen
Migration
Nerves Normal, Breath Normal

$30/$0 SOLD OUT