Concert Review: Deerhunter / No Age / Dan Deacon at Mr. Small's

I got lazy and didn't make it out last night, so we turn to our loyal readers for their thoughts on the matter:

Lupe: Deerhunter pretty good, No Age so-so, Dan Deacon oddly out of place stole the show. imo. Jimmy?

Jimmy: I generally agree with Lupe. The acoustics were terrible. After the first "round" of songs (after all of them playing an opening number together, each group took turns playing one or two songs, then passed the stage to the next group), Dan Deacon went into the sound room at the back of Smalls and must have helped with the mix because you could barely hear any vocals at all.

I had very high hopes for this show, so I'm pretty disappointed today.

Deerhunter definitely has the best book of songs out of the three groups, but played a scattershot of material, omitting most of their best tracks. No Age sounded ok, but again, you basically could not hear the vocals at all. I agree that Dan Deacon was out of place, but it was almost necessary to have something to break up the show that wasn't just heavy noise. His last song, "Wham City," was the highlight of the night for me.

Now for the worst part. After Deacon finished up with "Wham City," everyone came back on stage and started playing together, but there didn't seem to be any plan. After playing something that started out sounding like a song, all three of the guitarists started pounding the same chord for what seemed like at least 8 solid minutes. The singer for No Age started hitting his mike against his palm to see if any sound was coming out and nothing registered, so he tossed his mike on the ground. At that point, I turned to my friends and said that I'd had enough. They agreed, and we left. I don't know if there was any encore because we didn't stay, and no, I did not hear my favorite song, "Agoraphobia."

Disappointment. I have a feeling that this show needed to be at an outside venue because Smalls just couldn't deal with the sound issues. Dan Deacon was also the only act that even attempted to interact with the crowd in any meaningful way.

Touch(e)-Ups: Saturday / Monday

I don't really follow the pun in the title of that last post by Henry, but I'll take the handoff and run with it anyway to fill in some gaps in the coming days.

Saturday promises a welcome return of the sunshine, and should bring just the weather to get you in the mood for a dirty helping of retrofied rock n roll. Chicago-based Athens will serve it up all hot and steamy tomorrow night at Garfield Artworks. Check out their single "Big Old Fat Old Man" below.

Download:
Athens - "Big Old Fat Old Man"

And after the weekend's behind us, Monday holds an awesome lineup at Mr. Small's, with Deerhunter, Dan Deacon and No Age all sharing the bill in what they're calling a "round robin performance." Any of those three would be worth seeing solo, so what's not to love about this triple-bill? Here's Deerhunter a month ago finishing up their Aussie tour with "Twilight at Carbon Lake":