After a Friday night of feeling really old, Bostonist's friend Jimmy Mac managed to attend a show where he fit right in. Here, according to Jim, is how Ted Leo and the Pharmacists rocked it at the Middle East on Saturday, December 5. Also, Jim doesn't know how to use a camera, so Sean Hafferty kindly let us use some photos he took for our friends at Ryan's Smashing Life.
Boston and New Jersey aren't identical twins (one's a state and one's a city... just don't ask us which is which), but both places have a lot more in common with each other than some of you from either area may be comfortable admitting. People are more interested in New York than either area, they're both full of meatheads giving the rest of the town a bad name (looking at you, Jersey Shore and Faneuil Hall), we both, uhhh... well, in any case, the point is that we both have music scenes that often get overlooked.
New Jersey's shock troops in the battle against unfair stereotypes - at least in the “rad music department” - are Ted Leo & The Pharmacists and Titus Andronicus, the two bands who gave a sold-out Middle East downstairs crowd an interrobang for their buck on a snow- (and sweat-) soaked Saturday night.
Boston rolled out the welcome mat for its visiting dignitaries with an amped-up, early-arriving crowd and Wallcreeper, the local band tasked with opening ceremony duties (the literal welcome mat the greeted the bands was incinerated, having been soiled by foul weather and Narragansett). Having attended that babyfaced gathering that was this year's Miracle On Tremont Street, we spent most of Wallcreeper's set scoping out the crowd for signs of older life. It was an “older” crowd (mid-20's ain't really old unless you're someone who hit up Camp Rock last year), and the young kids in attendance were much more appreciative of life beyond indie synthpop than the rubes who found Spoon “boring” the night before. Wallcreeper plays solid rock numbers: the band is not a powerhouse yet, but it's got potential (especially if you like the Jeff Tweedy side of "rocking" things). Interested parties can check out the band at PA's Christmas Party on the 19th (along with The Tony The Bookie Orchestra and Pants Yell!).
Titus Andronicus was waiting in the wings and ready to cut loose. Anyone who's seen these Glen Rock boys tear up a stage knows that, despite the band's small catalog of songs, it's got one of the best live sets around. The band has some Boston area connections: they're pals with local heroes Hallelujah The Hills (whose recent release Colonial Drones seems to have gone overlooked in the midst of everyone in town freaking out over Passion Pit: it's one of Jimmy's favorite records of the last year), and lead singer Patrick Stickles spent a few months of his recent past living in Somerville. When Stickles cuts loose with his guitar, it's like watching Michael J. Fox play his Marty McFly solo in the first Back To The Future dressed as Teen Wolf (to be clear: this is a compliment).
In a flashback to the Spoon show, we found ourselves surrounded by lots of kids who didn't know the band. These youthful fools shrugged and wondered why the hairy man was screaming so much, but the rest of us (and some pumped-up new converts) were blown away by the intensity of the band (frontman included: he's no Neil Diamond, but why would anyone want that?). Highlights included the epic “No Future Part II: The Days After No Future,” the fight song and mission statement “Titus Andronicus,” and a new song Stickles wrote during his Somerville tenure that made us wish we had a follow-up record to listen to right now. Tom Scharpling, host of The Best Show on WFMU (and Friend Of Ted Leo), has compared Titus Andronicus to Born To Run-era Springsteen in terms of their energy and all-killer-no-filler output, and he just might be right-on. They're one of those (sadly few and far between) bands that make you glad you keep up with new music and stay on top of things: do not miss them when they're in town next.
If that wasn't enough, TED effin' LEO was up next, delivering close to two hours of nonstop rock while leaving two banged-up guitars in his wake. Some of us came late to the altar of Pharmacy, but we worship all the more fervently for our tardiness. The band is rolling out new tracks off their soon to be released (but not soon enough: March 2010?!) Matador debut, The Brutalist Bricks. If you can't wait until March, hop on over to the Matablog to download “Even Heroes Have To Die”).
In the midst of new material, Leo et al haven't forgotten how much we like “Heart Problems” and “Me and Mia” (their one-two punch of an opening gambit). But they're also a lot more comfortable with the new stuff than they were this past summer at Maxwell's in Hoboken, so you won't care at all when you realize that they didn't play “Little Dawn” or “The Sons of Cain.”
Ted's confidence in his new material is not unwarranted: if Saturday gave any indication, this record is a beast. Continuing the trajectory mapped out by Shake The Sheets and Living With The Living, Ted and Co. are barreling onward and upward with breakneck speed. The new songs are catchy as hell: “One Polaroid A Day” is destined for many mixtapes made by lovers and spurned suitors alike. The older songs still hit their marks - I'll never get enough of “The High Party” no matter how many times I hear it, and “Timorous Me” can be a permanent mainstay in Ted's encore arsenal for all I care - but the new tunes have me jazzed about the future. The well-chosen covers aren't just for the true believers: even if you're not as well-versed in punk history as the band and its most loyal fans (we may have blanked on their cover of Samhain's “Archangel” during the encore, but dug it all the same), you'll still end up bopping along. That being said, the band and its most die-hard fans make you want to hit the books and catch up on all this backstory to see what all the fuss is about. (And yes, “Dirty Old Town” was in the set list, and it was awesome as usual.)
So if you needed any reminding that Ted Leo and The Pharmacists are still out there delivering some damn fine goods, we hope this rant has done the trick. We may be at the start of yet another Boston winter of sidewalks covered in sheets of ice and day jobs where the heating system is either over-the-top or nonexistent, but we can soldier on knowing that there's a batch of new favorite songs waiting for me in March. Ted Leo: Making New England Winters Tolerable, Since Before Phoenix Fans Were Born.
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit