Sea Wolf @ Rock and Roll Hotel
During "I Made a Resolution", Sea Wolf songwriter Alex Church promises that he's never going to sing a sad song again. But considering that Sea Wolf's set at the Rock and Roll Hotel on Sunday had been half downtrodden weary balladry and half more uptempo yet equally gloomy chamber-pop, this resolution will likely go the way of the standard "I'm going to quit smoking," "I'm going to lose weight" and "I'm going to stop drinking." Church is clearly a moody balladeer at heart, but he has a way with picturesque arrangements and much like the songs on Midlake's The Trials of Van Occupanther, some of these songs brought to mind woodland cabins and cloudy skies as easily as broken hearts. This sort of moody songwriting might not necessarily lend itself to memorable live performances but luckily for Church and co., their set had enough variety in terms of tempo so that there were only a few lags in their set.
Church came onto the stage looking like a young Mark Lanegan and sounding like a less whiny Conor Oberst. He seems to borrow some other traits from the two as he has Oberst's literary songwriting (he's a big fan of John Steinbeck and Jack London) and Lanegan's dark rock and roll stage presence. This dark beauty lent itself to both slow finger picking acoustic numbers like "Middle Distance Runner" and more energetic songs, complete with xylophone, like "Black Dirt". Sometimes the arrangements were downright boring, but more often than not the audience stared at the stage captivated and Church noticed. "Thank you for being so quiet," Church exclaimed before explaining that he now understood why openers The Jealous Girlfriends love D.C.
Photo by faithdesired, used by permission
The Jealous Girlfriends, who had previously been here opening for Nada Surf, probably love D.C. because they're downright friendly to their D.C. audiences. They came out joking with the crowd, introducing themselves under fake names and making light of everything from the basis for their songs to that guy doing the high pitched screams commenting that he must be hurting. The music was pretty entertaining as well. While at first singer Holly Miranda might've induced a quick eyeroll by adding her name to the ever increasing list of female singers who sound like Cat Power's Chan Marshall, by the end of the set her energy had tired out the gentlemen standing at the front of the stage. She could throw herself to her knees while scratching out a noisy guitar solo or chirp out a jazzy ballad and it all sounded fantastic. It seemed an odd shift going from such happy energy to such blue and dense chamber-pop.
Sometimes folky sometimes funky trio Don't Be Glib, which included some of the best blue-eyed soulful vocals on this side of the Atlantic courtesy of MaryBeth Doran, rounded out the eclectic show for the people who were lucky enough to be able to attend a Sunday night concert without regrets.