Review
MySpace Tour 2007
- Author:
- Review Date:
- 12/08/2007
When I first heard Dashboard Confessional, I was horrified. “How could it have come to this? What went wrong? Why, God, why?” Truth be told, when I sing I sound not unlike Chris Carrabba, but I had spent my high school band days trying to cover that fact up because, geez, who wants to sound like a girl? I wanted to sound like a man! Like Eddie Vedder! Then I heard the Dashboard MTV Unplugged disc and my perspective changed. Carrabba barely had to sing because .every. .single. .person. in the audience knew .every. .single. .word. to .every. .single. .song. It was amazing. I could just see all those high schoolers in class scrawling the words to Again I Go Unnoticed on their forearms and believing their souls a little bit more saved. Because, come on, that’s what rock music is about.
And I more or less relived that experience at the Hellogoodbye/Say Anything show at the Grove in Anaheim. Before I go into the details can I just say that neither Forrest Kline nor Max Bemis had to sing a word? It was Dashboard all over again, because the kids in the audience not only knew all the words, they could also carry a tune.
I suspect that before every show Hellogoodbye’s Forrest Kline conducts a séance in which he summons up the circa-1996 incarnation of Rivers Cuomo like a Native American Spirit Animal in order to aid him in his battle for nerd rock. Kline jitters and gesticulates like an epileptic and in case you were wondering, yes, he has that whole vocoder-electro-sounding tone when he sings live and I’m pretty sure it’s not entirely effects-driven.
By the time they got around to Shimmy Shimmy, the entire crowd was floored. Gone was the fuzzy EP production, replaced here by bright, dueling Ratatat-like video-game guitars.
Other highlights included the mandolin-powered Baby It’s Fact and Oh, It is Love which featured not only the mandolin, but also banjo and keys. It’s funny, when you subtract the self-serious posturing most contemporary emo bands insist on preserving, the form is totally and completely endearing.
Hellogoodbye is weakest when they shed their dancepop skin and step out into straight-ahead pop-punk land. For one thing, Forrest sounds too cute to front a pop-punk outfit. But the issue is really one of songcraft. The band obviously thrives on the little flourishes, meticulous movements, and puppy dog melodies (“there exists a melody that just might change your mind” on I Saw It On Your Keyboard pretty well sums up their philosophy). These just don’t exist on the old stuff (Call n’ Return) and get lost on some of the rockier live versions (Figure A—B).
Keyboard Confessional: I can’t stand Max Bemis’ vocal delivery. I’ve never liked it and I’ve always felt like it holds a pretty decent pop-punk band down. I also hate his lyrics. Songs like Spores make me cringe with anger and distaste (“Then you threw me up against the wall/The city shook to meet our mating call/All the anger and the pain poured forth/The act itself defied the blessed source”).
That said, Say Anything rocked the Grove, I’ll give them that. After the Hellogoodbye set ended, the teenyboppers for the most part cleared out, leaving only SA’s faithful quasi-hardcore fanbase to carry the vocals. And they did. It never ceases to amaze me how a band can release an album one week before the show, and still every new song is known and sung by the fans with the same fervor and intensity as their old stuff (okay I admit it, I’m not amazed. I’ve used bittorrent too.).
So from my perspective things were ideal: I couldn’t hear Bemis over the massive wash of power chords so I got to bob and sway and just sort of vibe with the crowd. The boys hit their stride during Woe. Here, the guitars backed off a bit and the start/stop dynamics pulled us in. From there on out it was song after song of dancing and pausing to let the college girls fill in the chorus vocals.
Which was especially awesome during Every Man has a Molly since that song is about the closest thing SA gets to a down n’ dirty Buckcherry/GnR rockfest. Bemis growled the vocals and, wouldn’t you know it, the girls were right there with him. There was no question why the guy got into the rock game—he’s got something that makes the girls go nuts. They peppered their hits throughout, and, let’s hand it to SA, they’ve written more than their fair share of hooks, so the crowd was kept at a fever pitch start to finish. Hats off, lads.
To view pictures of the event, CLICK HERE
Photo Credit: Pamela Lin
And I more or less relived that experience at the Hellogoodbye/Say Anything show at the Grove in Anaheim. Before I go into the details can I just say that neither Forrest Kline nor Max Bemis had to sing a word? It was Dashboard all over again, because the kids in the audience not only knew all the words, they could also carry a tune.
I suspect that before every show Hellogoodbye’s Forrest Kline conducts a séance in which he summons up the circa-1996 incarnation of Rivers Cuomo like a Native American Spirit Animal in order to aid him in his battle for nerd rock. Kline jitters and gesticulates like an epileptic and in case you were wondering, yes, he has that whole vocoder-electro-sounding tone when he sings live and I’m pretty sure it’s not entirely effects-driven.
By the time they got around to Shimmy Shimmy, the entire crowd was floored. Gone was the fuzzy EP production, replaced here by bright, dueling Ratatat-like video-game guitars.
Other highlights included the mandolin-powered Baby It’s Fact and Oh, It is Love which featured not only the mandolin, but also banjo and keys. It’s funny, when you subtract the self-serious posturing most contemporary emo bands insist on preserving, the form is totally and completely endearing.
Hellogoodbye is weakest when they shed their dancepop skin and step out into straight-ahead pop-punk land. For one thing, Forrest sounds too cute to front a pop-punk outfit. But the issue is really one of songcraft. The band obviously thrives on the little flourishes, meticulous movements, and puppy dog melodies (“there exists a melody that just might change your mind” on I Saw It On Your Keyboard pretty well sums up their philosophy). These just don’t exist on the old stuff (Call n’ Return) and get lost on some of the rockier live versions (Figure A—B).
Keyboard Confessional: I can’t stand Max Bemis’ vocal delivery. I’ve never liked it and I’ve always felt like it holds a pretty decent pop-punk band down. I also hate his lyrics. Songs like Spores make me cringe with anger and distaste (“Then you threw me up against the wall/The city shook to meet our mating call/All the anger and the pain poured forth/The act itself defied the blessed source”).
That said, Say Anything rocked the Grove, I’ll give them that. After the Hellogoodbye set ended, the teenyboppers for the most part cleared out, leaving only SA’s faithful quasi-hardcore fanbase to carry the vocals. And they did. It never ceases to amaze me how a band can release an album one week before the show, and still every new song is known and sung by the fans with the same fervor and intensity as their old stuff (okay I admit it, I’m not amazed. I’ve used bittorrent too.).
So from my perspective things were ideal: I couldn’t hear Bemis over the massive wash of power chords so I got to bob and sway and just sort of vibe with the crowd. The boys hit their stride during Woe. Here, the guitars backed off a bit and the start/stop dynamics pulled us in. From there on out it was song after song of dancing and pausing to let the college girls fill in the chorus vocals.
Which was especially awesome during Every Man has a Molly since that song is about the closest thing SA gets to a down n’ dirty Buckcherry/GnR rockfest. Bemis growled the vocals and, wouldn’t you know it, the girls were right there with him. There was no question why the guy got into the rock game—he’s got something that makes the girls go nuts. They peppered their hits throughout, and, let’s hand it to SA, they’ve written more than their fair share of hooks, so the crowd was kept at a fever pitch start to finish. Hats off, lads.
To view pictures of the event, CLICK HERE
Photo Credit: Pamela Lin