© Vincent Cornelli, STREETLAYERS.COM
© Vincent Cornelli

Girls & Real Estate played Bowery Ballroom (pics)

photos by Vincent Cornelli, words by Andrew Frisicano

“Smith westerns just pissed all over our backstage floor.” – Girls

Girls

The second NYC-area stop on the Girls/Real Estate tour, after the Nov. 2nd kick off at Maxwell’s, happened Friday, November 6th at Bowery Ballroom. Girls frontman Christopher Owens and bassist/album producer JR White took to the Bowery Ballroom stage with their new guitarist and drummer (after their former axeman quit during their recent European tour) for Girls’ biggest NYC show so far. The show was sold out.

And so what began as a coronation became an exercise in the lowering of expectations, in a performance that was, for the most part, frustratingly inert. Mr. Owens, his hair matted with sweat or some other adhesive, meandered through most of “Album,” along with some new songs and a blissful cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End.” He sings in a mottled, nasal quaver that demands a sort of reverence to ingest fully, but the quiet in the room wasn’t of the good kind. Regardless, Mr. Owens, Mr. White and the two members of the touring band, Ryan Lynch on guitar and Garrett Godard on drums, plowed on with the ease of a campfire singalong. (Mr. Godard sang harmony on many songs, a welcome jolt of energy.) [NY Times]

The Smith Westerns were reportedly in the house. The Girls/RE tour continues to wind back to California. More pictures and a video of Girls single “Lust for Life” from the gig, below…

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Girls — Lust For Life @ Bowery Ballroom, 11-06-2009