Capitol Years / The National Eye @ Rock n Roll Hotel
So really there’s not much of a story to last week’s triple bill at the Rock and Roll Hotel in NE. One of our first visits to the club started with the City Goats, a local modern rock band with a Southern Californian punk feel, who played loud and aggressively, if not…you know…well. Part of the blame was certainly on the sound system at RnR (a recurring theme), but if either nuance, discernible vocal melodies, or invention are your things, City Goats may not be for you.
We went upstairs between sets to get a feel for the place, and, though no one was there (another recurring theme), there are some great lounges, a hilarious beer selection that includes Schlitz, Sparks, Sparks Plus, and some decently priced “good stuff." They also play pretty good tunes upstairs, from Arcade Fire to New Order to Johnny Cash.
But back to the music at hand. The National Eye were the evening’s second act, and again fell victim to a bad speaker mix. All fuzz and no separation, their take on late-period Beatles songcraft lacked some texture, and the vocals were all but lost in the shuffle. One of their two frontmen donned shades to look like Jeff Lynne, an appropriate move given their ELO-styled arrangements and harmonies. Towards the end of their set, the songs started to distinguish themselves a little more. “Halo” began with stately lap steel but built into something of a rave-up – an appropriate lead-in to closer “The Attic,” itself a garage psych rave-up that found the six piece band finally firing on all cylinders, and refusing to be limited by that poor mixing job.
Striking up a conversation with National Eye’s keyboardist and bass player after the set, we chatted a little about their coast-to-coast tour and new recordings. Mid-conversation, they looked at the stage and said “Damn, I think we’re starting” and quickly hopped on stage. We weren’t really sure what was going on – this was the exact same lineup as the National Eye, the only change being the Eye’s guitarist removing his glasses and donning a button down shirt. They cranked out six or seven tunes, none too far a cry from Eye’s retro-pop song cycles (though served here with more crunch and tambourine). And, much like the Eye, they kicked into another gear for the last three tunes, finding a particularly tight groove in the ringing chords of “You Can Stay There.”
But then it was over. The band put down their instruments, and our keyboardist friend came back to chat with us, and informed us that the show was over: “No, that was Capitol Years.” We tallied seven reasonably short songs – good songs, too – but 30 minutes of music barely qualifies as a headliner. What’s more curious is that there was no mention of the fact that the same six guys made up both the National Eye and the Capitol Years, no mention that the twelve (we counted) audience members were seeing a new set by a new band.
Can you blame then? Second-to-last night of a cross-country tour, just before a final homecoming gig in Philly, twelve people (10 of them male, big surprise there), weekday night, Northeast DC. We’ll give them a pass this time around because the half hour was a good half hour, but hopefully there’ll be a little more bang for the buck next time.
As an addendum, from what we saw, RnR’s got potential. What’s everyone’s experience at the Hotel been so far? Is turnout being effected by location?
Photo from the Capitol Years' website.