The Sounds, Morningwood @ 9:30
Morningwood's Chantal Claret grabbed a giggling red head from the 9:30 Club's selection of over-18 concertgoers. "Let me see your ID!" Age verified, they totally frenched.
If a forced lipstick lesbian moment didn't make the audience squirm, the once willing participant shaking her head "no" as Chantal stripped the girl to her bra and globbed kisses with girls-gone-wild-subtlety may have. At the moment it was all good, "give her a hand." the 23 year-old lead singer relented.
Then later Monday night, the club's crowd and the bride stripped bare were promptly thrashed on the lead singers blog :
girls who get up on stage, don't get up there just so you can look at your friends and smile and be like "hey i totally got up on stage" ... do not get on my stage if you are not sure if you can handle being sexy. i don't got time to talk you out of your panties and to tell you the truth i don't want to.
DC was neglected the honor of the highest mark on the Morningwood crowd-rating system, "the bead" (named after the bead of sweat on the tip of a, uh, tit), after tepid response to tepid performances of the bands self titled debut. The album doesn't suck, and has a a great video single in "Nth Degree." But it doesn't excuse their faux cock rock performance that was flat and overly wordy.
So please, send in the Swedes.
They spat on the crowd in the good old fashioned way. The literal one. Maja Ivarsson, the Hedwig Hansel and Debbi Harry love-child lead, kicks more ass live than their second album Dying To Say This To You lets on.
Like a gleaming hood ornament or the bowsprit of a ship, Maja stood atop the foremost stage monitor, launching her spit half the length of the club. The range was impressive. Their latest release is less offensive but just as juvenile, powered by the Jeff Saltzman (producer of The Killers' "Hot Fuss") machine. It dominated last night's set list, overshadowing their 2003 debut.
Highlights came from "Painted by Numbers," "Ego," and "Tony the Beat." The synth blips came out wide at the low end and sharp at the high, with levels staying comfortable with Jesper Anderberg in control of the keys. The perkiness of the sound never became lazy or misdirected, avoiding the self-conscious, and always driving towards pop-overload.
The production of the show was packaged but gritty. Gimmicks and new wave stage cliches were executed so lovingly that they were simply fun. We're not sure how a stage exit to a Simmons Drum Synthesizer drum line works without parody, but it did. And the all-cowbell intro by the skinny black tied keyboardist? Yes.
Image of Morningwood by flickr user seriously kv.
Image of The Sounds by flickr user adub2005.