Rogue Wave @ the Black Cat
Rogue Wave is what you might call the paradigmatic 2007 indie band: their hooks are pretty, their lyrics are incomprehensible, and their singles appear regularly on both elitist music blogs and network television soundtracks. Accordingly, the question facing Rogue Wave is the one facing all the other Pitchfork wunderkind of similar vintage: Are they a small band that, for the moment, is big, or a big band that, for the moment, is small?
Last night's concert at the Black Cat didn't provide a conclusive answer. While there is absolutely no doubt that the band can both write and rock, their sprawling sound can be inaccessible to a live audience that is learning, and deciding whether to love, the band. Because little of today's slacker rock is danceable (except, of course for the "dance-rock" subgenre), a band like Rogue Wave must either pound out the testosterone rock or wholeheartedly embrace its lyrical sensibilities to connect with a live audience. Currently, the band is caught somewhere between these two poles. Neither riffs nor rhymes are central to the Rogue Wave mission.
The characteristic Rogue Wave song consists of a pretty, plaintive melody that fights for air under a tide of electric guitars. The melody emerges, gloriously, in a chorus, and then gets pulled back under. This push and pull is part of the band's charm. That beautiful hook is always elusive. There's a genuine pop sensibility in most Rogue Wave songs, and it was on full display last night -- in the encore, when lead singer Zach Rogue ( né Schwartz) performed "Cheaper Than Therapy" alone on the stage, acoustic.
The principal set, which drew from 2005's Descended Like Vulures and this year's Asleep at Heaven's Gate, would have been a killer singalong show. But the audience was stumped even when it came to the singles, like "Lake Michigan" and "Publish My Love." Because the verses are muddled, and the choruses composed usually of only a single line, the audience had no idea what to sing, or where to react. It was like watching a puppy dog thumping its tail expectantly but not knowing whether to bark.
It's no surprise that the band's more mainstream hits, such as "Eyes," which was featured on Heroes, and "Publish My Love," which was featured on The OC, are the ones where the music makes room for Rogue's thin, sweet voice. At the show, both were greeted with cheers, and almost sadly followed by only silent head-bobbing. The band's most singable sad-guy song, "California," was given the treatment it deserved: a simple acoustic rendition that ended in a full-band, full-volume, electric outro.
Fans often act disenfranchised when a band "grows up" by tightening up song structure, reducing distortion, and clearly pronouncing the lyrics. And perhaps in five years, audiences will look back fondly on Rogue Wave's fuzzier days, just as some do now with Death Cab and The Shins. For now, audiences are certainly ready to eat out of the band's hand, but, so far, they have no idea how to do it.