Portland Maine 2-24-07

[GeMeNeYe]

Wow! what a show. a tight, powerful soundscape of a rock show!

Half the songs were new -- to my ears at least -- but sounded polished and potent! I think the setlist must have been fairly similar to the 2-23 Paradise in terms of the new stuff. Even Rats, December Kids, and Paper Birds were all in there (Rats and Paper Birds were hot!!), along with I Hate Love. Encore was Have you Seen the Rain and a new tune.

Notes: Brad used an acoustic guitar for several songs -- looked like a classical headstock on it, but body looked like the standard dreadnaught and sounded like steel strings. But he had this amazing tone on it - he played a few tight and rockin solos on it that sounded almost like the Gibson ES -- amazing tone!

Also during the verses in Even Rats, I noticed Brad has a tricked out guitar part that adds chordal texture and harmonizes with the vocal melody. It was geting a little lost in the sheer volume of the rest of the song but sounded great!!

Not sure if the soundboard was manned by someone from the venue or someone with the band (where's Sam?), but I thought the sound was really tight - especially the bass. Brad's vocals were not always loud enough - featured more as part of the wall of sound rather than the main(e) attraction -- but I wished they were louder 'cause he was ON!

Another inspiring show! Can't wait to hear more of the new material!

Dan, I'll let you hit us with an official setlist -- and your recording!! Great to meet you!

[Dan]

2/24/07
SPACE Gallery
Portland, ME

Set 1:

Portrait of a Scientist as a Young Man
All I Saw Was You
Even Rats
Gaunt Debutante
Stealing Bread from a Crow
Ooh Belle#
Airplane/Primitive
I Hate Love
Children Of December
Original Blue Air>Paper Birds


Encore:
Have You Ever Seen The Rain*
Moonlight Mile@

Notes:


# Andrew on Steel drum and Marc on midi keyboard
* Credence Clearwater Revival
@ The Rolling Stones
WinterSleep and Phonograph opened

[spifo]

This show confirmed that I need to move on. There wasn't a single pre-Eisenhower song, not a single instrumental/instrument driven song (unless you consider the intro to paper birds its own song). The new songs were either bland or ok. I'll admit I prefer the powerful or high energy instrument-driven songs (like Jumby, Proud, Sorry, Dogs on Bikes) But for lyrics based songs, there was nothing that really hit home like suffocation keep or reddish moon. Sure some of the lyrics may have been meaningful, but a crowded concert is not a place that you can appreciate that. Good lyrics are also received much better when they are put with music that can live up to them, which the Slip has done in the past, but apparently is missing now.

I felt the concert was just a way to SEE them play studio stuff. Of course half the music hasn't been put on an album yet, but the songs sounded like regurgitations of recorded material. It wasn't a show to be inspired by new musical interpretations of songs, or high energy riffs and grooves. For all the shows I've been to in the last year I've said "at least they played this one or these two songs, so I guess it was worth while for me" but this show had absolutely no high point for a run down old fan like me. They are truly a new band.

It crushed me to hear people sing along with Airplane/Primitive, because I feel the song lost its soul when they added the lyrics to the beginning. Now they can never play it the old way again because in the band's lyrical absence the crowd would fill the void, distracting from the amazing intrumental layering and rising energy that the song's instrumental roots possess.

It hurts me. It hurts me a lot. But they have been steadily changing so I'll just hold out, downloading shows every once and a while awaiting their next musical shift.

Cheers to you who can appreciate the new stuff better than I. It is your time.

[hoby]

Willfully missing the point of your post:

I'd say the encores pre-date Eisenhower by quite a bit.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Also sorry that you didn't enjoy the show.

[booher]

Notes: Brad used an acoustic guitar for several songs -- looked like a classical headstock on it, but body looked like the standard dreadnaught and sounded like steel strings. But he had this amazing tone on it - he played a few tight and rockin solos on it that sounded almost like the Gibson ES -- amazing tone!

That's a Goya steel string guitar. They make some cool stuff, especially the older ones.

But, yeah, Brad's got great tone. The only thing that threw me off was he usually plays the same amp all of the time, but on Conan when I saw him he was using a Dual Rectifier as opposed to his DC-10. I tried asking him through a myspace message but still haven't gotten a reply on that. I'm looking to find one of thoe DC amps myself.