Photo of Sunset Rubdown by my dear friend Andy P.Usually at indie-rock shows, the attendees are a smattering of different - but not disparate - arty types: music nerds, hipsters, coat hanger girlfriends and boyfriends, and other musicians. However, this show-attendee paradigm was shattered at the later Sunset Rubdown show at the Empty Bottle last weekend. Enter a new sub-genre of concert-attending males: the ShowBro.
The ShowBro differs from Hipster Runoff's classifications of an AltBro or an AltBag in that the ShowBro has not incorporated anything alternative into his lifestyle. He does not try to acclimate his bro-ness with his surroundings, at all. Allow me to illustrate through my experience.
Sunset Rubdown lived in relative musical obscurity, I thought. To get into them you would probably like the more popular Wolf Parade first, and then research its multiple side projects. Eventually you would stumble upon the more experimental SR. So when a group of clean-cut boys who looked like they missed their El stop back in Wrigleyville appeared in front of me at the show, I was a little perplexed.
Even with their Old Styles in hand and blond girls in tow, I still managed to withhold my judgment. Until the show started. And it wasn't just me who was befuddled by ShowBros presence.
Lead singer and keyboardist Spencer Krug was giving ShowBros weird looks when they were jumping up and down and high-fiving one another like teenage girls at a Plain White T's show. With Krug being a Canadian, this suggests that the emergence of ShowBros is of international concern. (Usage note: It is always ShowBros, never ShowBro- they are a pack species). Krug also had to take time out of the show to admonish ShowBros for leering at the so not-their-type Camilla Wynne Ingr, multi-instrumentalist. Like she would sleep with them and their syphilgonnaherpes crusty penises anyway.
It is great if you are not a usual show-goer; really, more people should expand their musical horizons. But please, don't act like a jackass when you are there. You wouldn't go to Italy and tell the Italians how to make wine, would you? Then don't go to a show and tackle football your way up to the front only to ogle girls, high-five one another, and act like you are in a cheesy nightclub.
Most of the show was really good though. I thought the music would be more tangential, but it sounded mostly like it does on the albums. It was a typical straightforward bar show, replete with Krug citing intoxication as a reason for the lack of an encore.
The crowd became most exuberant when Sunset Rubdown played "I'll Believe in Anything," originally a SR song but more commonly known as a WP song. ShowBros shared in this exuberance, further proving my Wolf Parade as a gateway to SR point. The ShowBros could have benefited from listening to themselves sing-scream the closing lyrics: "No body knows you and nobody gives a damn either way."
Finally, this is a video from the same night but the earlier show. They played "The Mending of the Gown" again at the later show, but they seem looser with this crowd than they did with our crowd. It looks good on hi-res.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment