Concert Review: The New Pornographers, The Dodos, Imaad Wasif @ The Fox Theater

The New Pornographers w/ The Dodos and Imaad Wasif

The Fox Theater (Oakland, CA)

July 18, 2010

Everything was going perfectly according to plan— until they started singing.  From the moment Dodos frontman Meric Long first spoke into the microphone, people in the audience perplexedly tilted their head à la a Jack Russell terrier, looked at the speakers overhead, and then back to Long.  The vocals were muffled and distant, making even music-free banter between songs almost inaudible.  His words were nearly completely indiscernible.  The audience clearly was missing most everything that was said or sung, so why wasn’t the Fox Theater sound crew even attempting to fix this obvious problem?

After a 43-year period of inactivity, the Fox Theater reopened in early 2009, and by all appearances is one of the premiere venues in the Bay Area.  Yet for all its interior beauty, the theater has continued to have problems with perfecting their sound quality, which is a real shame when two class acts like The New Pornographers and The Dodos are playing on the same night.  But as percussive elements rule The Dodos’ live performances, and as this was also a primarily New Pornographers crowd, no one in the audience raised a public fuss during the local band’s set.  The Dodos stuck mostly to songs from their touchstone album Visiter, a smart move that capitalized on their natural energy and instrumental rawness.  Acoustic guitar, drums and vibraphone, played at full force, were all they needed to at the very least sustain the interest of an older, geekier crowd than they normally see.  The band soldiered on, with songs like “Fools” and “Jodi” surging into cathartic releases and serving as reminders of how percussion can wonderfully dominate when laid out loud and bare. 

Review: New Pornographers, Together

The New Pornographers

Together

B

Together has been lauded as the triumphant return of the New Pornographers after the lull of 2007’s Challengers, but after a few listens, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit underwhelmed. Maybe it’s easy to expect too much of The New Pornographers, a band that has churned out several critically acclaimed albums in the past ten years and stars four very talented and individually successful musicians like A.C. Newman, Dan Bejard of Destroyer, Neko Case and Kathryn Calder. We expect chugging guitar riffs and infectious pop hooks sung in perfect male/female harmonies, so sugary that we can easily swallow down those abstruse lyrics. Most of all, we expect them to sound as fresh and energetic as they did when we first blasted Mass Romantic over our speakers ten years ago. Not that I should be projecting all my expectations on to you—maybe it’s just me holding on to the sounds of “Letter From An Occupant,” “Electric Vision” and “Sing Me Spanish Techno” a little too tightly. But it’s difficult to say exactly what’s missing on the new album. It’s more mid-tempo than earlier albums, but no more so than 2005’s Twin Cinemas. There are the high-energy numbers of old like “Crash Years,” “Up In The Dark” and “Your Hands (Together).” There are breezy hook-filled tracks like “Silver Jenny Dollar” and “Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk.” So what’s the problem?