Noise Pop day 1 (Walkmen, Broken West, Nyles Lannon)
photos & words by Ryan Muir
(Thursday, Feb 28, 2008) – After a few flight delays in getting to San Francisco for the 2008 Noise Pop Festival (though I don’t know if I’d really consider it a “festival”), I ended up making my way into a sold out show at The Independent to catch performances by Nyles Lannon, The Broken West, and the band that everyone was there for: The Walkmen. I just missed openers A Modern Machine.
The Independent is a relatively small venue – on the scale of Studio B in Brooklyn, but the upper balcony makes it feel a bit like Bowery Ballroom or Music Hall of Williamsburg. More photos and reviews from the show below….
Nyles Lannon….
The Broken West….
The sixteenth annual Noise Pop music fest kicked off last night with a rather muffled bang at the Independent for a sold-out show where the Walkmen and the Broken West traded live staples for amorphous, nameless new tracks. The Broken West’s breezy power-pop turned decidedly more morose with new songs that flirted on the fringes of ’90s adult contemporary, perhaps fueled by some sort of brewing existential crisis. Only “On the Bubble,” from the Angelenos’ psych-meets-canyon-rock debut I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On, provided a brief jolt of elation — but the moment was fleeting at best. [SPIN]
The Broken West delivered a short set that was comprised mainly of new material. This was disappointing, since we’d never caught their live show before. For all the good things we’d heard, the set just seemed underwhelming. The highlight of the set was when the bassist came out to sing lead vocals on an upbeat, bluesy, stones-y jam.[Hippies Are Dead]
The Walkmen……
The Walkmen also started off with new ones, and not even the faintest hint of a certain rodent-inspired number off their lush sophomore effort, Bows+Arrows, that appeared on pretty much any and every mixtape made in 2004. With no “Rat” in sight, frontman Hamilton Leithauser — whose “I-don’t-care-if-it’s-too-tight” gold-buttoned blazer made him look like an alluring prep school bully — struggled vocally on “Wake Up” and “What’s In It for Me,” singing with a cartoon-like bug-eyed strain and hitting the shrill, guttural notes with more shriek then operatic soul. Maybe he over-extended himself during the pre-show festivities, which included a serenade of a donut shop proprietress, Hamilton confessed with a sly smile. Thankfully, he ultimately opted to indulge an expectant crowd, expending many sugary carbs during a stirring encore of “The Rat.”
So we got to the Noise Pop party one day late. We would have made it to the Walkmen’s show at the Independent on Wednesday had we been paying enough attention to actually remember that it was happening far enough in advance to score tickets. [Scenes From the Scene]
The Walkmen’s set really paled in comparison to their set this fall, which is unfortunate. They started out strong, grabbing the crowd with an energetic opening to the set. However, from there on out the set seemed to languish in a kind of “typical Walkmen” type vibe, with no clear building of the show’s feel from one song to the next. [Hippies Are Dead]
