NO!: WHITE RABBITS (#497, JUN 30 2009).

09/26/20 • -1 min

NO! THIS is what I call music: The Podcast

White Rabbits "Company I Keep" (19.2 MB) from It's Frightening High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 30, 2009 This is a song where you can really hear the difference the band's two albums. Fort Nightly didn't have anything this stripped-down -- even the slow, ballad-y stuff was deeply layered. It's actually kind of odd to see, because on stage there are still six guys, but they're doubling each other, or doing nothing but tapping a tambourine and generally not adding much to the sound.

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NO!: FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE (#498, JUL 8 2009).

Fountains of Wayne "The Summer Place" (18.6 MB) High Noon Saloon Madison, WI July 8, 2009 I wondered before this show if Fountains of Wayne had ever played Madison before -- I knew they hadn't since I've been here -- and Chris Collingwood remarked during the set that he thought they hadn't. So it's kind of odd that their first visit, a decade and a half into their career, would be a stripped-down, semi-acoustic set. Making it even a little odder, they played several new songs, which could sound totally different when they're released on the next FoW record sometime in the near-ish future. The new stuff was mostly enjoyable but not especially great. This one really drove home what a bougie band this is, and I kept hearing it all of a sudden in other songs throughout the set. It got me re-evaluating songs like "Hackensack" and "Valley Winter Song," and even "Stacy's Mom," which got a really nice, slow rendition in the encore that belied its "Just What I Needed"-ganking origins.

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NO!: WHITE RABBITS (#496, JUN 30 2009).

White Rabbits "They Were Wrong/We Were Wrong" (24.2 MB) from It's Frightening High Noon Saloon Madison, WI June 30, 2009 After seeing Spoon and coming away with a greater appreciation for their later material, I wondered if a live White Rabbits show could get me to like their somewhat-disappointing new album a bit more. It's a weird record, in that it sounds so much more stripped-down than their debut; it doesn't sound like an album made by a band with six members. And, well, it didn't -- it still sounds pretty much the same on record. But, the performance on stage was really great. Check out Stephen Patterson's face -- this isn't even that intense a song! The mark of a great live band is one that makes a great show out of lesser material, and these guys sure are great live.