Asobi Seksu made things hard on my first time taking pictures in months as they played in almost total darkness, save for a few backlights and Christmas lights strung around the instruments. My only opportunities to grab photos came when they punctuated the music with a strobe light coming from the front of the stage, making for an interesting visual experience.
Aside from the lighting, Asobi put on a great show that made me enjoy their music even more than I had on CD. I also gained a new appreciation for adorable frontwoman Yuki's unique voice, which came off quite powerfully in the small Abbey Pub music room, and was surprised to find out that she had no Japanese accent to speak of. Meanwhile, the rest of the band rocked out pretty hard behind their wall of distorted rock. After running through most of Citrus, the band wrapped things up with a fuzzy, distorted, Asobi Sesku-fied cover of the Crystals' "And Then He Kissed Me," which worked surprisingly well with Yuki's voice and the band's sound.
The Appleseed Cast came on next to the cheers of the young emo crowd, who lapped up everything the band did. I've enjoyed some of the Appleseed Cast's mix of instrumental post-rock and emo in the past, but something about their show this night just had me sort of underwhelmed. The instrumentals seemed to end too abruptly, and the vocals when they did sing were unremarkable and got lost in the guitars. The kids loved it though, especially the young'uns next to me who kept trying to get the crowd to dance to the incredibly un-danceable music. I ended up leaving early, satisfied with my Asobi experience and ready to go to bed like the old fogey I'm turning into.
Download: Asobi Seksu - "Thursday"
yeah...I'm not sure I can really think of Appleseed Cast as dance music, though I have to admit that the thought amuses me.
Posted by: Kirstie | 01/30/2007 at 03:36 PM