Three Guys and a Singular Girl: Old 97s @ 9:30
The Old 97s made their triumphant return to the 9:30 Club last night. Photo by Lisa Johnson.
Our Nation’s Capitol has seen a lot more of the emancipated Rhett Miller in recent years than it has of his band, Old 97s. Miller may write most of the songs for the hard-charging country-pop-punkabilly quartet, but somehow he’s only about one–eleventh as interesting when he doesn’t have Murry Hammond singing harmony and Ken Bethea blasting out those vibrato flurries of surf licks. The pretty boy with the eyelashes really needs his grayer, gruffer bandmates to toughen him up.
The chemistry among these four guys from Dallas has produced a power-pop/country cocktail that’s helped them remain viable even as most of their mid-90s alt-country brethren have been naturally selected or morphed into something else. Making the promotional rounds for their recent Blame It on Gravity album, Miller has even gently dissed the prior 97s outing, 2004's Drag It Up, as having suffered from his emphasis on his solo work.
Nearly all long-lived bands eventually cross the Rubicon of having their albums "praised" as returns-to-form, as Gravity has been, but in this case, it's true. The 97s spared no effort to drive the point home at the 9:30 Club last night, including 10 cuts from the new record in their sweaty, two-hour, 27-song hootenanny. Drag It Up, meanwhile, was snubbed save for “Smokers”, one of the too-few songs on which affable bassist/vocalist Hammond sang lead.
This left plenty of time for twangy catalogue stuff like “The Other Shoe” and “Stoned”, with which the sold-out house happily roared along. The dude standing next to me saved his most emphatic, eyes-closed bellowing for those sticky-sensitive Miller ballads, which ought to have bothered his girlfriend even more than it bothered me. Which was a lot. (“Oooooooh, I’m gonna be lonely for the rest of my life . . . FUCK, YEEEEEAAAAH!!!”)
The 97s are seldom less than a rowdy, crowd-pleasing live band, and their performance lived up to that reputation, shot through with their typical confidence as swagger. A few discrete moments especially stood out:
- The way the room exploded after Bethea’s solo in the middle of “Stoned”, and again after his solo on “Smokers”.
- Hammond’s good-natured but failed attempt at pandering, when he recalled squinting to read a weathered Minor Threat poster on the wall of the original 9:30 Club. Befuddled silence ensued. (Maybe some people at the show were from out of town. Like, all of them.)
- Their glorious cover of former Bloodshot Records bandmate, two-time DCist interviewee and all-around Renaissance Man Jon Langford’s “Over the Cliff.”
- The goofy look of pride on Miller’s face during the first encore set, when openers The Spring Standard (whose debut EP he just produced) came out to join him on one of (I think) their own songs. The girl in that band is not Jenny Lewis, but I'm pretty sure that was the real Carrot Top up there playing guitar.
- Hammond's gorgeous solo take of “Valentine,” featuring sweet, sweet harmonies from Miller and sweet, sweet silence from the guy next to me. (He’s only got eyes for Rhett, apparently.)
- The volcanic outpouring of energy when drummer Philip Peeples and Bethea came back onstage for a furious closing five, beginning with “Dance with Me” and running through traditional night-ender “Timebomb”.
Good to have you back, Fellas. Feel free to chaperone your boy Rhett every time he comes through town.
Setlist:
The Fool
Barrier Reef
The One
The Other Shoe
Designs on You
Color of a Lonely Heart Is Blue (Murry Hammond lead vocal)
Lonely Holiday
My Two Feet
Early Morning
Stoned
This Beautiful Thing (Murry Hammond lead vocal)
Question
I Will Remain
Niteclub
No Baby I
Smokers (Murry Hammond lead vocal)
Over the Cliff (John Langford cover)
Rollerskate Skinny
The Easy Way
ENCORE 1
Come Around (Rhett Miler solo)
Picture This? (Rhett Miller with the Spring Standards)
Valentine (Murry Hammond w/ Miller singing harmony)
Dance with Me
Big Brown Eyes
If My Heart Was a Car
ENCORE 2
Indefinitely
Timebomb