OK, so I have been avoiding doing this for a long time now, but I need to get this off of my chest. I think enough time has gone by. And yet, I still feel like a bit of  traitor to an ideal…

Went to see Au Revoir Simone at the Highline Ballroom, 1/07/2010 in NYC. Was really looking forward to this show. I heard it was going to be “special.” And it was. They had a live drummer! What? Extra gear was brought out (an electric piano), Erika had her bass (girls playing basses slay me almost as much as girls playing PolyMoog basslines), feathers and sparkly things were hung from the rafters, and they made it snow on stage! (See pics above) Very cool in a vintage, techno-hippie kind of way. Plus they each came out wearing a different awesome white dress (Heather’s was the best with it’s very structured and architectural bustle puff. Sorry Annie and Erika - you both looked a twin vision, but I am stuck just inside Heather’s event horizon.)

They played most of their new album, Still Nigh, Still Light, which I really like a lot. I think I like The Bird of Music better upon my 5000th listen though. The best songs on each album (Knight of Wands, Only You Can Make You Happy and We Are Here or maybe The Last One, aren’t as strong as A Violent Yet Flammable World, Lark and The Way To There - close, but not quite. In fact I don’t think anything tops the Way to There).

Anyway, as a fan, I was into it. Totally. It is hard for me to even be critical of ARS as I have so fully bought into their aesthetic, but this show left me a tad underwhelmed. Yes I know, not every show can be epic and a lot of that has to do with the crowd. NYC crowds kind of suck for anybody playing below 136bpm. I have been to too many shows where people talk and text over the actual performance - the whole performance! Why bother coming? I better understand talking or finishing a conversation during the opener, and I have seen ARS open for lots of bands in NYC, but when you pay for a headliner - please shut the fuck up! What underwhelmed me you may ask? It was their playing. They seem to have reached a point, a plateau, in their technical abilities, beyond which they cannot progress. They still make sloppy timing mistakes and miss their cues sometimes. OK, maybe it is just me and my compulsion to analyze my favourite bands and music to a silly degree. Maybe I have simply seen them too often? Maybe no band would stand up to this level of pointless scrutiny? I am willing to grant all of that, and I will be attending their next show in NYC whenever that may be now that they are off on a mini tour in Portugual and Europe. There was just something about this show, once I got over the dresses and feathers and crystals and snow (which admittedly took me a while…) that left me a little flat. Even with Class Actress (one of my 2 fave new bands on the LES scene along with The Living Days) opening up and their lead singer joining everyone on stage for an a capella version of Kylie Minogue’s I Just Can’t Get You Out of My Head, something was missing for me. It could be they hadn’t rehearsed enough because the live drummer sounded terrible with them, and the electric piano addition didn’t blend too well either. I am not sure what to say about this…

I could go off on a diatribe about inspired amateurism (which I am a great fan of a la Brian Eno, OMD, Vince Clark, and almost anybody with the guts to take their musical heart and soul out of their bedroom or basement and put it on stage for all to see…). Perhaps I am expecting too much of them. Am I just sitting about waiting for them to turn into Lady Kraftwerk, and not taking them for what they are?

It is possible and probably inevitable that band and fan are not always going to see things the same way. And there have been instances where albums that initially bothered or bored me or albums that I loved right off the bat, have done a 180 degree turn in my head like OMD’s Dazzle Ships (didn’t like it initially) and Ultravox’s 1st two albums (the John Foxx fronted line-up which I didn’t like upon early listenings), and are now among my most favored.

I will be buying the next ARS album. I will be seeing the next show. I will approach both with as open a mind and ear as possible. And I will hope to be left with that breathlessly happy feeling of my 14 year old self lost in the middle of a crush like I was upon first seeing ARS at The Glassland Gallery (Now Glasslands) and upon my first hearing And Sleep al Mar, Where You Go, and Through the Backyards. Can you recapture the past? They did it with Lark and Knight of Wands - so I am hopeful, ever hopeful…