SAY ANYTHING @ The TLA

On Wednesday night, Maureen and myself took in the Say Anything show at the TLA and it was quite amazing. The night began at the South Street Diner for a lackluster meal and an apparent stench that permeated throughout the diner that Maureen was picking up on, but with my less than stellar sense of smell, I was unable to smell anything. Maybe I'm immune to the inevitable aroma that most diners give off from too many night spent at Tom Jones Restaurant...

I didn't really care much about seeing the opening bands so by the time we got to the TLA, we had already missed the opening band, Weatherbox, but we were just in time to see Biffy Clyro, the second band. Apparently they're from Scotland so already they've earned some bonus points and their music was pretty diverse going between being soft and serene and loud and chaotic. It was a nice mix and they even did some harmonizing between the three band members so that was pretty cool.

After their set, Maureen mentioned that she wanted to get a drink. For the first time in forever, I didn't associate drink with alcoholic beverage so I walked her over to the snack stand and that's when she laughingly said she wanted a drink drink not a soda or water. I guess you'd have to be there to find it funny. But just a heads up, if you're looking to get ripped at a show at the TLA, you should order a rum and coke at the bar. Maureen got one and it was as if they filled the cup with rum and just put a spritz of coke.

Manchester Orchestra came on while we were in the bar area and I have to say I was a little disappointed in their performance. They seemed to have sped up all of their songs and the mellowness of the songs was replaced by an almost chaotic stage pressence which was cool but still disappointing for some reason. Either way, their set was pretty good but they didn't live up to the hype that I had built up in my head.

Quick little side note: In between Manchester Orchestra and Say Anything, they played Beatles songs on the house PA system which was extremely enjoyable. It was nice hearing songs you could sing along to / enjoy instead of random songs you've never heard of / don't want to hear. But The Beatles songs just added to the giddyness I had in anticipation of seeing Say Anything.

Say Anything entered the stage to the intro from their latest record, In Defense of the Genre and broke into the first song off the record, "Skinny, Mean Man" and the energy in the building just exploded. Max Bemis, the lead singer writes amazing lyrics and he definitely backed them up throughout the show with his stage pressence. And musically, the rest of the band was dead on with what they were playing. The music sounded as if you were listening to the actual record. With the variety that Say Anything employs in their songs, each song evoked different responses from the crowd. One minute everyone was rocking out to a straight up rock song and the next minute everyone's dancing along to the beats of a song like "Baby Girl, I'm a Blur". Max even played an acoustic song to which he had everyone in the crowd hold up their cell phones and lighters. It was a pretty amazing show that kept everyone on their feet because you never knew what kind of song was coming up next... I'll definitely be seeing them again the next time they're around.