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Thursday, July 30, 2009

My Bloody Valentine @ The National (07-30-09)


My Bloody Valentine is one of those bands that seemed to change peoples lives in their teenage years and get them hooked on some underground rock binge. I was however either to stubborn at the time to join on this band wagon, to stuck on my folk n' freak out music. However in the past couple years things are different. Sounds all around seem to spark me / and last night I biked away from the show fully understanding my progression of musical understanding.

Kurt Easley was the opening act for the show. It was just a simple folk set with bad jokes in between each song. It was basically filler before My Bloody Valentine comes on.

My Bloody Valentine's sets was a mind melt of dream like qualities added in with legit rock ability. Considering this band have been on hiatus for quite some time I was quite taken back by how relevant this band still seems to be after all these years. Theres a real fierce energy through out their set that just puts you in a completely different set of mind. The main example of this being during the final song "You Made Me Realise" which at first is a straight up rock song but then after a couple minutes turns into a 20 minute noise battle that literally makes your entire body shake // real white noise of brutal yet soothing melodies cluster fucking each other. That moment right their is up their as one of the more impressive things I have ever seen live.

However I do have one grip / and this is by no means My Bloody Valentine's fault / but how come you people aren't dancing? You payed 30 bucks for this - so how in hell are you just gonna stand around and chit chat with your friends during My Bloody Valentine's set? Straight up the crowd really took away from the atmosphere of the show. However this did by no means kill the show / it was just weak - u - know.

photo courtesy of babystew

2 comments:

Brent Tomchik said...

Kurt Easley is not folk, and would have been a lot better if his whole band, Lilys, played with him. It confused me at first how confident he was on-stage despite his boring opening act. Check em out though; they're good.

www.myspace.com/thelilys

I agree about the crowd. I think too many people were there for MBV's noise level as a thrill instead of the music itself. Kinda urked me

Andy Dunlap said...

To be fair i'm not sure if folk was the best term to use after looking back on this. I guess striped back acoustic sets would be the best term. Either way i'll look into the lily's cause i know nothing about them.

Also while the sound levels where fuck impressive / they made me want to dance / ive seen to footage of people crowd surfing to them back in the 90's / i was sort of hoping for that sort of crowd energy / either way mad impressive show.