squidpants

so I went to see the Fiery Furnaces show at the 9:30 Club last night. It must have been free night for Hill staffers and Clear Channel interns, because the place was full of tools with popped collars making jokes about holding up lighters. It was pretty annoying. The show, however, was alright. One of the folks with me said "they really have ADD," which was a pretty fair assessment. Their songs are already pretty choppy and change tempos and melodies a lot, but it felt like they made even more changes in concert, and at least one song, "Here Comes the Sun," was played much faster than on the album. The show itself felt short, even though it was 45 minutes to an hour, which is a pretty average length, I think (including two short encores), but the choppy songs might have contributed to the short feeling. The band didn't really seem to connect with the audience much either, they'd sort of play and change and stop, then say 1-2-3-4 really fast and start another song (or medley, they did that as well). The music was good and fun, though sometimes I wished they would just do one thing for 4 minutes, rather than switch so often. During a lot of their songs, I would start to think "this sounds like..." but then right before I figured out what it was, the song would change again and I would lose what I was thinking about. It was an interesting feeling. The drummer was really entertaining too, he was manic and made lots of weird faces, threw the sticks, bit them, and would make crazy grandiose movements like hitting the cymbals with his hands upside down or holding his arms outstretched after he hit something. I could have watched him the entire show. Despite the good music and a generally fun show, afterwards I felt like I hadn't done anything, it was like that time just disappeared. Again, a weird feeling. Below is a pretty blurry pic from the show. They always look clearer on my phone.