I had been sick for a week and pulled myself together to go to this show. Man was I disappointed that I wasted the gas and a night of going to bed early watching bad tv. First of all, I got to the venue an hour late because I had no interest in seeing the opening band after previewing their "sound" on youtube. Like the rest of the audience, I not only manage to make it before the opening act went out, but I was standing around for over an hour waiting for them. Their set was blissfully short 7 songs, yes I counted. The last song had the bassist saying "meow" over and over into her mic. Just...bad.
Well it was okay because KATE NASH was going to come on! The girl with the snarky attitude, cute dresses, great accent and wonderful music! The musician who's CDs have been on loop in my car for weeks at a time. This is what I kept telling myself for the next hour or so that we stood around waiting for her to come on. Ms. Nash FINALLY made an appearance around 11 pm with her "girl gang."
The girl gang should have been my first sign to leave. The second should have been the first screaming, guitar fueled shriek fest into the mic. The third should have been the fact that by 5 songs in people were leaving, no one was dancing, no one was singing, between every song people were yelling out song suggestions. I took the screaming of songs to be a helpful hint to Kate that her devoted audience were not the sorts of people who generally enjoy screaming lyrics and just WAY too much guitar.
Speaking of guitars, could she have switched guitars more frequently?! You really need 4-5 guitars to play 10 songs?
Well I kept thinking: I'll just hold out, she has to play Foundations, Mariella, something to redeem this! She's got to have an acoustic guitar someone. Then it happened! Foundatio...OH GOD NO KATE!!!! Foundations comes on and she's made it punk, indie, Brit rock. I stuck it out and thankfully I don't remember how the butchered versions of the 3 older songs she sang went.
I will say that when Kate actually sang, her voice was beautiful and she has amazing lyrics.
I understand that artists evolve and change, but this just seemed so forced and contrived. I have a hard time believing you go from England's Zoe Deschannel to a reject member of The Runaways.
I have never been so bored at a concert. I have never seen so many people leave for such an established artist. I have never so badly wished for a power outage.