Concert Review: White Denim/White Rabbits @ Blueberry Hill
In the battle between The Walkmen and and icy precipitation, precipitation won.
I don’t like traveling to out-of-town concerts during the winter. Inevitably, it will be either bone-ass cold (please refer to the sub-zero Camera Obscura, Chicago ‘07 concert) or there will be a nice snow/ice storm. I drew the latter tonight. Forecasts had called for a wintry mix to start falling at 9 PM and continuing through the night. The forecasts, for once, were right. [As I go back and edit this at 1:30 AM, a snowplow is chugging through the hotel parking lot spitting out a wee bit of salt…]
Unfortunately for me, I really don’t like driving when conditions are slick, especially at night and more especially when I’m in a relatively foreign locale. So, I did a comparison between my level-of-liking The Walkmen and a tiny weather radar map on my Blackberry. Having seen The Walkmen before and seeing an impending blob of frozen precipitation, I made the decision to skip The Walkmen. Sorry, guys.
On the bright side, this was a rare “reverse bill”, where the openers were bands I wanted to see more than the headliner. And to be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have traveled for The Walkmen and White Rabbits alone. White Denim sealed the deal. I’ve been a fan of White Denim since hearing “Let’s Talk About It” on WOXY several months back. I was instantly hooked and did a copious amount of net-surfing trying to find their material. Eventually they released their debut EP on iTunes and after a listen, it easily coasted into my list of albums of the year, and “Let’s Talk About It” ended up in my Top 3 songs of the year (see the previous entry).
Of course, they chose to play only two songs off that EP at this show. Now, it’s usually not a big deal when a band doesn’t play all my favorite songs in their set. But White Denim did not play “Let’s Talk About It”. They sold a shirt with the song/album name on it, but they didn’t play it. I couldn’t believe it. Their whole set seemed to be building towards a raucous finale, and I think the crowd would have eaten it up. Instead, they closed with something slightly less-raucous. The aggregate raucousness for the set was still pretty good, but dammit all, “Let’s Talk About It” anywhere would have made the set near perfect. The band offered to play a house party for anyone with a PA system. Sadly, I was without a PA, and a house for that matter. I don’t think anyone took them up on the offer. I wonder if they would have played their missing tunes there?? Really, I’m not usually hung up on setlists like this. I swear.
White Rabbits was decent. At least they played their more well-known songs (yeah, it’s a low blow, so what?). People seemed to enjoy them more than White Denim and I think several attendees where there to see them over The Walkmen. No complaints about their set.
Overall rank: A begrudging 8/10. 9/10 with “Let’s Talk About It” (NO, I WILL NOT DROP IT). 10/10 with The Walkmen and no snow a distinct possibility. Too bad.
On the Web: Let’s Talk About It EP on Pitchfork
