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It's tough being a Yeasayer fan in the District. First, their January show sells out the Black Cat Backstage, prompting shocked fans to start an online movement to get them to play upstairs, prompting shocked DCist staffers into asking just when the Black Cat started selling tickets ahead of time for Backstage shows (answer: about a year ago) and prompting shocked DCist readers into asking...just who is this band, anyway? However, the Brooklyn quartet promised a quick return to a larger stage, offering first dibs to those disgruntled fans who gave their email addresses to the band's promoters, who found out about last night's show a week in advance of the general public. So, the band made its triumphant return to a very full Black Cat Mainstage on the first night of their new tour with Baltimore art-rockers Ponytail.
Thus making the brevity of their set awfully surprising. With the understanding that they have only released one album, a set time that clocks in around the fifty minute mark during a show that's essentially been put on to thank their fans for being so dedicated seemed slightly odd, especially when the loud outcries for an encore were met with the increasingly louder sound of Gang of Four's Entertainment!. There was an air of puzzlement at the end of the show as the concertgoers wondered whether they felt like greedy children because of the excellence of the previous fifty minutes, or whether they had just been given the shaft.
Perhaps another reason that the set seemed a little short had something to do with the structure. Yeasayer eased the audience into their show with a few numbers that showcased their soothing and dreamy Arabian-inspired instrumentals rather than their Chicago-esque vocal harmonies or their punchy bursts of energy (note: the bent and beat-up state of drummer Luke Fasano's crash cymbal.) So when they pulled out the hopeful post-apocalyptic tune "2080" it felt like a lightning bolt had energized the set with shouts of "Yeah! Yeah!" Suddenly, singer Chris Keating wasn't engrossed in his keyboards but convulsing about as if some sort of spirit had taken a hold of him. "Sunrise" and "Germs" took the band into similarly energetic states and Keating started drumming on the bar above the stage, thanking Ponytail between songs for being the nicest people alive. "They make Mother Teresa and Barack Obama look like assholes," quipped Keating.
They also made the rest of the audience look undercaffeinated by comparison. Ponytail's noisy art-rock sound lies somewhere at an intersection between the rhythmic patterns of Deerhoof and Battles with added fuzz and Molly Siegel's shrieky vocals flung overtop. Until the last song it was impossible to decipher what exactly Siegel was saying, but the petite singer bounced up and down with her eyes shut and her smile wide as she screeched with a voice that would make Karen O and Björk turn their heads. Not my thing, but the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy the quartet from Baltimore.
The fans in the audience also knew that half of Yeasayer also hailed from Charm City because they received a few boos and a shout of "poser" when Keating said that they were from Brooklyn. "It's just where I live," countered Keating who immediately admitted that he was from Maryland and gave the dissenter in the front row a fist-pound before going into their final song and announcing that this show was especially for the people who couldn't get into the January show downstairs. This, at 11:12 p.m.
Admittedly, this is a city famous for doing the standing still at the most raucous of concerts, and the fact that most of the dancing occurred next to the bar would likely daunt any band. Maybe the fact that Yeasayer clearly had no intention of coming back for an encore shouldn't be a huge surprise. Or perhaps the band was just feeling especially generous to those who had to take the yellow line south, not wanting them to miss out on anything, but that's highly doubtful. Yeasayer clearly delivered the sounds that have made them famous. They sounded as percussion and harmony-happy as TV on the Radio and as mesmerizingly noisy as Deerhunter. However, whether by accident or design, their early exit left the crowd wanting more.
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the kids in that opener may be the nicest people alive, but they were god awful.
i actually hate encores. theres always this awkwardness after a set and people are like are they going to or are they not? id rather just know. and it might seem short but hey they only have one album so i wasnt expecting much.
ponytail was also great! i too was reminded of deerhoof. the smiling!
Seriously, I heard a total of maybe ten words of English in Ponytail's set. The band was okay, but those vocals...youch.
Yeasayer, however, was awesome.
They have one album so I wasn't expecting a long show. Not having an encore did not disappoint me at all. I really feel we will be talking about the early days of Yeasayer ten years from now; they will achieve much success.