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Much better…. Muuuuuch better…

A while ago… back in like August, I went to see Lake Trout at the 8×10 in Baltimore. That was Exit Clov, The Benzos, and Lake Trout. We stayed all the way through one song by Lake Trout and left because the sound was horrible. I was hoping it was just the 2 first bands and that Lake Trout would sound good, but man was I wrong. I’ll be hard-pressed to go back there for another show.

But that’s in the past. We went around the corner to the North Star Bar (walking distance, already gonna be better) to see Lake Trout again. I talked to Woody, the lead singer of Lake Trout and asked him why Benzos isn’t playing this show (as was billed on the posters hanging all over). He said there were some family issues with one of the members so they had to bail. I didn’t care very much, I wanted to see them, and was glad they were finally at a good-sounding place.

The Underwater
First, the opening band (well, the 2nd band, I didn’t get there for the opening band). The Underwater was… well… let me put it like this: they are excellent musicians. That being said, I wasn’t a big fan… Joking referring to them as Incu-back… Or Nickle-bus… The drummer was very good, he just needs a few lessons in dynamics (everything had to be F*#$in’ LOUD or it was not worth playing). Also, the crowd for them was quite small, and they seemed pissed off about it. The singer was trying to do some crowd participation, but when that didn’t fly, he was basically like “screw you guys” and turned his back, leaning on an amp. If you’re not the main band, appreciate the people that are listening to you and move on. So, while it didn’t warrant me going into the other half of the bar and watching the Bronco’s game, and it was entertaining to watch, every song sounded the same, so on to…..

Lake Trout
Awesome. Very good. They played a lot of stuff off of “Not Them, You” but also did key tracks from “Another One Lost” which made me extremely happy. Woody has this thing where he has more effects peddles for his vocal mic than his guitar, but it was just used as an effect, not a crutch for bad singing like some people do (ex: Eiffle 65: Blue… that stupid voice through keyboard effect because they can’t carry a tune). They closed with Bliss which is definitely my favorite song too.

The guitars (both guitarists played hollow-body electrics for most of the time) sounded great, the balance on stage was great, and even the keyboard player tucked in the back left of the stage came through fine. And he played a F@#!ing FLUTE. I always thought the flute on their tracks was a keyboard, but no, he whipped out out from behind him and was dead on. points++ on that one…

Also, after I was talking to Woody in the bar before their show, I overheard him mention to someone that this was their first show in 6 months because they were on tour as the live backup band for Unkle, which I will definitely be trying to track down some recordings of…

So yes, go see them. Go buy the albums. I’m glad I didn’t write off their live performance after the failure at 8×10. And I’ll see them any time they come through again.

Next up is Tokyo Police Club at Middle East in Cambridge MA Saturday night. Hopefully we can make it up there, but the snow has other ideas…

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Concert Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.