I've never been to The Warehouse before and I'll hopefully never have to go back, as the place looks like a Pizzeria Uno that somebody stripped before abandoning it, and the parking lot has more broken glass than Porcell's liquor cabinet (that's a joke, son, get over it)... still, if Medication are playing anywhere within 5 miles of my house, I'm going, even if no one bothered to hire a soundman for the night, which was kinda weird. Medication were solid, as always, despite the sound issues-- any Medication set is going to be the best 6 or 7 songs you could possibly hear at that moment... I think I've lost track of how many "ex-Dustheads" bands there are out there, Byrds of Paradise being one of them. Using Black Market Baby/D.C punk rock as a template and then adding a bunch of indie pop touches seems to be what they're doing, and even though they've got a couple of good songs, their success ratio so far is kinda low... plus their drummer has lots of hair-wag, lookin' like Dave Grohl in the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video... from what I could tell the guitar player relies on effects pretty heavily, so not having proper sound in the building (plus the lead vocal mic ended up sounding like a dishwasher) didn't help Byrds of Paradise at all. I was taken back to the times when I'd go to the Anthrax and a band like Alice Donut, Shaved Pigs, or Porn Orchard would be on the bill, and instead of being enlightened by their "different approach", I'd just ended up getting annoyed... Circle Pit's new album is suitably all-over-the-place, sometimes sounding like a lazier No Age while still carrying plenty of thud, other times sounding laid-back and direct like Limes (not sure how I came up with that one). Their live set wasn't quite as hot-- the songs were still there, natch, but the duo had been turned into a Roxette-meets-Culture-Club five-piece, and the whole "we might be on heroin" gimmick gets boring anyway, making sleep seem like the better option, so by 1:00am I left... the best news of the night was finding out there's going to be at least one more show at Popeye's Garage (Tyvek, Terrible Twos, and Estrogen Highs on the 19th).
"Omega Man"
Circle Pit -
"Another Trick"
Medication -
"Don't Die"
