Live Review: The Bravery / Switches / Your Vegas [02.22.08]

As a former student of anthropology, I have a certain curiosity for how demographics affect a person’s experience of large cultural gatherings like concerts. Specifically, I’ve been interested in how age, socio-economic and regional factors influence the atmosphere of a show as well as the band’s performance. Without going into detail, my research to date has left me with a general fear of All Ages shows.

This fear brings me to my experience of The Bravery concert at Terminal 5, where the 3000+ crowd was a patchwork quilt of tightly wrapped hipsters, unbuttoned bankers, forty-something parents with their tween daughters and (most unfortunately) hordes of heavily intoxicated teenage girls. Though none of these groups were a problem in isolation, the areas where they mixed were a total killjoy. The forty-somethings (who have brought their kids to what they think will be a clean rock show from a clean rock band) are continually assaulted by full cups of beer thrown from the balconies, shouts of “move bitch!” and “make me whore!” and the hair-pulling cat fights that followed. Fights between drunk girls broke out everywhere like it was prom night on an episode of The O.C.. To make matters worse, the offending drunks were often whisked off by their less-intoxicated girlfriends before security arrived. Now to the music.

Luckily, Terminal 5 is big enough and dark enough that all three acts seemed nearly oblivious the frequent eruptions of chaos in the crowd. First up was Your Vegas, a five-piece indie-rock oufit from Leeds, England. The band, whose work has drawn favorable comparisons from U2 to Coldplay, played a tight set of tracks from their upcoming album and A Town & Two Cities EP. Though they were unknown to the majority of the audience, the epic vocals of frontman Coyle Girelli and the anthemic riffs of guitarist Mat Steel had heads nodding just minutes into their set.

Next in the lineup were Brit power-poppers Switches. Though the band played a virtually flawless set complete with all of the big hair, British accents, and tight jeans a pop-punk fan could ask for, their lighter, often sugary lyrics and multipart operatic vocals ran counter to the more stoic mood of their New York audience. While it was clear from Matt Bishop’s wide vocal range and the band’s tight execution of their songs that Switches have talent, their live set felt meticulous, overly rehearsed and slightly restrained. Their debut album Lay Down The Law successfully pays homage to pop/glam legends like Bowie and Queen on several occasions, but somehow the live show comes up short.

The Bravery took the stage to raucous cries from all three floors of Terminal 5. Despite the steadily increasing B.A.C. of their younger fans and the indifference of those who had already reached their intoxicated zenith, the band brought the rock to their home town crowd. With the radio hit "Public Service Announcement" in the three-slot, The Bravery wasted little time bringing the energy up to a danceable level. In addition to a couple of new tracks, the band ripped through a songs from The Sun and the Moon before laying down crushing synth entries for crowd favorites “An Honest Mistake” and “Fearless.”

The band’s performance would have been superb were it not for several noticeably frustrating technical problems that plagued guitarist Michael Zakarin. Throughout the set, Zakarin took center stage for some wonderful guitar solos as well as lead vocals for the b-side track “The Dandy Run.” Unfortunately, it was these changeups that proved the most problematic for the Terminal 5 sound guys. Through it wasn’t quite the fiasco heard at Cat Power, the sound was noticeably off at key moments.

From the first few bars of “The Dandy Run” it was clear that the mic levels had not been adjusted for Zakarin’s thinner, and somewhat raspy voice. It wasn’t until the final few seconds of the song that the levels were increased to the proper proportion. Zakarin, who was clearly surprised by the sudden boost in volume backed off the mic causing the end of the song to die in an anticlimactic fade. Though I doubt this ruined the song for anyone, things could have gone better. During “An Honest Mistake,” just as the first pumping had peaked, Zakarin ran into trouble again. With several small motions in the direction of his pedals he sent the stage crew into a connection checking fury. When it was clear that the guitar solo would not happen as intended, bassist Mike Hindert jumped on the metaphorical hand grenade with a song saving stage drive into house left. Admirably, the band would play through their encore without complaint.

YOUR VEGAS





SWITCHES





THE BRAVERY





Review and Photography by Chris Owyoung for Loose Record.