Artist: Pretty Girls Make Graves
Venue: Irving Plaza, NYC, NY
Date: May 13, 2006
It’s always exciting when I manage to convince friends to go to shows with me, although I must admit I feel more than a little pressure as well — my reputation as a recommender of “good music” is at stake everytime we go together.
With this preface in mind, let us now travel to Irving Plaza on May 13th, 2006. We arrived just slightly late, as they had already taken the stage. Their latest album (and as it would turn out, their last one) had been good, but somewhat similarly hit-or-miss like their previous work. I thought I knew what to expect at the concert, based on the first time I’d been introduced to them at the music festival in Seattle — a feisty act, with a raucous female main singer and a demure female multi-instrumentalist (including clarinet!), and uh, the other guys in the band. However, my memories were both right and wrong. The main singer sounded even more whiny than she normally does in the albums, and the demure one mostly stayed on one instrument this time around.
More than that however, was their terrible sound that night. Although it improved over the course of the evening, it was really muddy, off-key, and there were many flubs. And though they were definitely rocking out physically on stage, it was missing from their music. (I should note that I’ve always hated Irving Plaza for its shitty sound.) Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy it — they played all their best songs, and I started appreciating many of the songs from their first album that I hadn’t before.
After the show was over, I had to face the music — “so, uh, sorry about that,” I said to Rob & Sheila. “What?” Rob asked. “My ears are ringing so bad I can’t hear anything. Is it always that loud there?”
“Oh, uh I guess it was kinda loud…”
“Kinda?! I think you’re losing your hearing, man!”
So I, the star soothsayer had completely mispredicted what the main complaint was going to be…Turns out they liked the music well enough, except for the fact that they couldn’t hear for a long time afterwards. Looks like I need to start wearing earplugs before I go completely deaf myself.
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