Sunday, January 20, 2013

Alt-J @ Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, 11-Dec-2012 (early show)

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I was excited to go to this show because it was at 6pm. Please can we have more matinee shows please!

Alt-J seem to me to be an easy band to like but a hard band to love. At the heart of the band are its idiosyncratic lyrics and folkish harmonies. I know they have been very successful very soon in their career, but I was surprised by how completely confident they were. There was not a hesitation even when relying vocal tricks to hold a song together.

I thought that the drummer was a hired hand as he seemed to play like a drum machine, following the band not pushing it. I was wrong however as he appears to have been present from the start. Perhaps what I was hearing was an aspect of a studio oriented band reproducing their stuff on the road.

Despite the intellectualism there were times when the band really go goiing and people began to dance. I would like to hear more of this aspect of Alt-J.

A recent NYT article entitled If You Like the Moody Blues, Try Alt-J seems to completely miss the point of Alt-J. They are not bombastic, but subtle.

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