Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Film School at Spaceland

Film School


One of the more sonically dense albums of 2006 was Film School's self titled release. Film School manages to blend layers of guitars and keyboards into a swirling hurricane at one moment and then switch to the sound of light falling rain. They descended upon Spaceland to debut some songs from their new album "Hideout" due to be released on Sept 11th.

Downtown Union


Downtown Union tried to channel Two Gallants, Black Keys, and The White Stripes with their one guitarist and one drummer setup. Spaceland was fairly empty at this point.


Pela





Pela by the way of Brooklyn played to a growing Spaceland audience. Pela immediately reminded me a faster punk version of The Hold Steady combined with moments of Bruce Springsteen. The idea of punk was partially due to Eric Sanderson's (Bass) Black Flag shirt. Billy McCarthy (Vocals/Guitars) was all over the stage on this particular night playing like he was on center stage at Staples Center. He was strumming rapid fire barre chords on his blond Fender Telecaster(similar to the Boss). Nate Martinez (Guitars) was busy strumming octaves on his Fender Telecaster while stomping on his two Line 6 DL4 modules to add some shimmery delay effects. Their album "Anytown Graffiti" is out now on Great Society.


Film School









Spaceland was packed when "Garrison" started to blare over the speakers. I was apprehensive about this show because I was convinced there was no way they could reproduce the density of the album live. My fears were quickly abated when I saw the pedal boards on the floor. I think I really need to get an Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. Jason Ruck (Keyboards) was using a Roland SP-404 sampler in combination with his Kurzweil keyboard. Lorelei Plotczyk (Bass/Vocals) was chugging away on her Fender Mustang Bass. Dave Dupuis (Guitars) wins the award for most delays on a pedal board. Film School played most of their new album which sounded great. The songs seem to be more straight forward and have a cinematic feel to them. The guitars were a more focused maelstrom. Lorelei provided some nice vocals on "Plots and Plans" that serve as a nice contrast to Greg Bartens (Vocals/Guitars). They must have rehearsed quite a bit because they sounded fairly tight for a band doing pre release shows. The intro for "Deep Lake" sounded huge live and had the rafters shaking. I was hoping to hear "Breet" but was still happy to hear "Like You Know" close out the set. Unfortunately, I will have to wait a month until I hear the new songs again.


Film School Pedalboards



Film School setlist for Spaceland (8/14/07)
"Garrison"
"Compare"
"Lectric"
"Sick Hipster Nursed by Suicide Girl" (Song title of the year)
"Two Kinds"
"Capitalized I"
"Dear Me"
"Deep Lake"
"Plots and Plans"
"What I Meant to Say"
"Sick of the Shame"
"Like You Know"

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Damn! You were all over the place while I was gone! Looking forward to hopping back on the AC train this weekend... :)