So I show up at The Knitting Factory in Hollywood about 7:45 p.m. and am totally confused. We were turned away from the Main Stage door and ushered over to the other entrance. This was the first time I had ever been to Front Stage and I like it a lot better. There are arm chairs, a big bar, and a small stage—a venue designed for intimacy.
Edison Glass had already finished half their set but I was immediately entranced by their style. The beats weren’t too dance-y, but made me shake my hips. Melodies were obvious but intriguing. The vocals were sweet and melodic but not heavy and were peppered with the occasional gang singing and brash sing-shouting. One of my favorites of the set was a simple ballad “When all we have is taken” because of the honesty and sincerity the dragging vocals and heavy beats created. I was definitely sad that I had missed a good chunk of their set and will be buying their new LP Time is Fiction pronto.
Up next was Paper Rival who was even more intriguing. They were the same genre of tap-your-foot rock as Edison Glass, but with more intensity. I was worried the lead singer was going to crack at any second from the pressure of musical genius (or other substances?). The vocals were a Say-Anything type earnest with the beats ranging from dance-y-Nightmare-Of-You to indie-Guster style. The
eeriest of the songs they played was called “Blue Birds” for which lead
singer Jacob Rolleston gave an unforgettable introduction. He claimed that June’s Alternative Press magazine had “sensationalized” the story but reaffirmed that the song was about a friend Phillip who had made some mistakes and, “killed a few people” but he still loves him. The lyrics tell the story
“Home, here with your family. Home, to hell with the rest. I knew you were crazy, never thought you would do this. Blood, there’s blood on the carpet. Blood, there’s blood on your hands. If the two are connected I’ll know where we stand.”
Rolleston sings this lavished with hopelessness and melancholy and then the song breaks into a dance beat. If you want to know the whole story… well I’ll leave that to AP‘s June issue. The band is mind-blowing live and almost as good on their full-length Dialog which was released this past Tuesday and I quickly logged into iTunes to purchase. You might be hard-pressed to find a physical copy in stores (which I say from experience) but the digital copy is worth your ten bucks.
Next band on stage was The Graduate, who weren’t very memorable. The musicians were cute and the guitarist was INSANE with his fast-fingered filler but on a whole, they weren’t anything too special. Their filtered, heavy-bass dance rock was typical. They were good musicians and the vocals were spot-on but there wasn’t much about their set that caught my ear or my eye. Several songs caught my attention on their intro (like “Surround Yourself”), but the more the song progressed the more I started to look around the room and wonder what was going on in the crowd.
Nightmare of You finally took the stage and by then the venue had filled completely. Their dance rock with sexual, sickeningly sweet, sadistic lyrics mixed with Brandon’s melodious vocals makes Nightmare of You one of my favorite bands. The band’s self-deprecating and admittedly abnormal humor only makes them more loveable as they break out into drunken covers of ska and metal. They even invited the other bands on stage for a massive dance party. They played some songs from their new EP Bang which they put out themselves because they “don’t trust anyone” but mostly filled the set with the fun renditions of their self-titled full length from 2005. Unlike when I saw them tour in 2006 at this same venue, Brandan skipped on a lot of his signature “yelping” but was still sensual as always. Ending with “Heaven Runs on Oil,” Nightmare of You was the icing on a spectacular show.
*More photos can be found in the Nightmare of You album on our Myspace
