Despite my best efforts to stay current in the music landscape, as someone past the double score mark in time spent on this planet, there are definitely phenomena which remain hidden to me. One such force is TED LEO, with or without his PHARMACISTS. The name had been kicked around before but never lodged hard enough for me to merit some investigative effort on my part, and I’d never heard a song of his until I borrowed a friend’s copy of the new Living with the Living a few days before the show.
Upbeat, rockin’ numbers seemed to be the order of the day (with a certain predilection to reggae beats (“The Lost Brigade”; “The Unwanted Things”), very earnestly delivered but minus the crappy haircuts of the current emo crop. Indeed, as Ted is signed to Touch and Go, I didn’t expect a
The last two records started out with some short intros before they really got into it, but not this show—a bristling “Sons of Cain” got the teenage-dominated floor crowd bopping around, while their parents stood at the bar, watching the spectacle. Ted & his Pharmacists filled the necessary prescription with gusto: despite the coiled guitar cord tethering him to his amp, he was hardly static, and the emotion-packed delivery of his vocals carried the songs (not much backing vocals to help out here).
The songs and melodies definitely seemed crafted to a younger audience; “A Bottle of Buckie” was a nice little strum-and-hum-along, while the polemics of “Bomb.Repeat.Bomb” and “Army Bound” seemed a bit simplistic to me. And given the seemingly boundless energy of a teen aged kid watching one of his of her favorite bands play live, the energy level of the crowd seemed to peak early (at about the third song where a crowd surge made taking photos a bit precarious). Aside from a few fervent souls up front (who also handed Ted a team-crafted set list prior to the start of the show, which I thought was pretty funny – Ted looking at it, saying “yes”, “no”, “yep, we’ll play that one”, “nope, the band doesn’t know that” etc), there wasn’t a lot of sustained kinetic energy in the crowd over the full duration. They are a devoted crew, though—a fan in front of me showed a very large forearm tattoo lifted from the Hearts of Oak artwork. Ted’s music can be catchy for sure, but I’m not fully in the grips of the viral fever—I won’t be getting inked any day soon.
Openers LOVE OF DIAGRAMS hailed from Australia and played a moody, guitar-slashing mix of ‘80s-style post-punk. Most prominent was the bass lead, not as fluid as PETER HOOK, more insistent like CLINT CONLEY, and the ANDY GILL-esque guitar riffs interwove nicely. The vocals and stage presence could use some work, though.
