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All The Saints, Deerhunter
The Earl
November 2006

I've been to a lot of shows lately but haven't sat down to do the reviews so things are getting a bit blurry in retrospect. Fortunately I took a few notes and pictures so I'll piece this stuff together as best I can.

Sometime recently I hit The Earl where they were having electrical difficulties with their main stage so they jammed all the bands onto the little side stage. All The Saints were on doing heavy, loud, ponderous stuff vaguely reminding me of early Sabbath (even before they dropped in a few bars of Sabbath in the middle of one of their own tunes.)

The vocals are intentionally spacey and droney and virtually unintelligible but they can play and I enjoyed the melodies they produced.

Next up, Deerhunter. I've seen these guys a couple of times but I'd forgotten how much I hate them. It's avant-garde noise for those too hip to be seen at an old fashioned rock and roll show. One balding, pipe-smoking fan next to me (and no, I'm not using "pipe-smoking" as a euphemism here. Wait, yes I am, but he also really was smoking a pipe) looked like he belonged at a jazz show, which is appropriate for the noodly racket Deerhunter produce.

They occasionally have moments of clarity with Velvet Underground undertones, but is it worth wading through all the noise to reach the melody? Not for me. I find enough noise in the street, in the world, in my head and music helps organize things into understandable thoughts and feelings.

After 10 or 15 minutes I couldn't take any more and wandered out front to sit at the bar and rub shoulders with David Cross and sundry other hipper-than-thou patrons and wrote several pages of drivel about how I'm not hip any more, and really never was. If you need to hear more about that, A) get help, B) subscribe to the ezine where I frequently rant on such topics.

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