St. Vincent, Foreign Born, and Basia Bulat @ The Bowery Ballroom. February 29th, 2008
So we had tickets for this show quite a while, and full intentions to hit up the High Places show at Market Hotel (which was moved to the Silent Barn) after St. Vincent was over, but that didn’t quite happen.
So I have had a little bit of a crush on Basia Bulat since I saw a Wired.com blog article
on her, about her cover of “Someday” by the Strokes, but after listening to her myspace I was a little underwhelmed. But she was actually really good live, and just as cute in person. She plays a version of alt-country, and was the master of many instruments (including guitar and auto harp). We caught about half of her set, and that even included a cover of Daniel Johnston’s “True Love Will Find You in the End” . Besides the fact that there were a ton of cowboy boots on stage(just kidding, but for real Basia and the two young ladies next to her all had them on), I really enjoyed her performance. I am not sure if I will like her recorded work, but I will definitely give it another try (and I can say that I am happy I got to see her live).
Foreign Born was slightly less exciting musically, but they definitely had good showmanship. The lead singer was really into it, but they didn’t quite do it for me…musically they were kinda on the same page as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! or something (but unfortunately not as good). One unusually element was that they had a set of very large conga drums…and I kept thinking “when are they going to use those.” And I found out during the last song when they only used them briefly. I thought they were a little excessive for only one song (and they must take up a lot of space in the van).
St. Vincent, as always, looked beautiful and sounded wonderful. Her performance is always great (but not so different from show to show), and I would highly recommend seeing her. But I will say that this was probably my least enjoyable experience seeing her live. The first time that I got to see her play was the best (and one of my top shows of last year), and that was even at the same venue. Scout Niblett opened for her, and it was a night of girl rock, in a not so packed Bowery Ballroom. The second time was during CMJ at the Knitting Factory. I can’t say that her performance was any different, because she still totally rocked, but I think that she has reached that point where I can safely say that I don’t want to see her play in New York City anymore. She has reached a level of popularity in the city where her shows sell out relatively (if not very) quickly (nothing wrong with that, and great for her), but the crowd around me was less than desirable. I guess it wasn’t the whole crowd, but just the group of people (and specifically the one guy that was dancing) directly in front of me. So given Annie (St. Vincent) is extremely beautiful, but to listen to this fratty guy pine and yell “I love you Annie”for most of the show was obnoxious, and the most lame thing of all was the fact that people were yelling (including the guy in front of me) “Marry Me Annie” (but then again I should have expected this). I know I could have moved, but I really liked my view of the band, and I think that it would have been similar no matter where I was in the venue. I just need to watch out which shows I am buying tickets to, and better gage the bands popularity(and crowd) in the city.
I can say now, that although I enjoyed the show, I wish I had made it to see
High Places as well, or thinking back on it instead of St. Vincent. We would have made both if a.) the cops hadn’t shut down the Market Hotel the night before and b.) the Silent Barn wasn’t so far away from the Bowery Ballroom.
(Tom)
Photo Credits:
March 28, 2008 at 1:56 pm
The best part of the show was when that guy starting playing air violin!