The best gig of my life (so far) was LCD Soundsystem at Birmingham’s O2 Academy in spring of 2010. The second best may have been last night, seeing Brand New in the same venue. One of these bands make sad and joyous electro-rock songs you can dance (or slow dance) to. One of these bands makes sad and angry emo and post-hardcore songs you mostly can’t dance to. They have* wildly different fanbases.
And yet.
Obviously there’s a lot to be said for the intimacy and ecstasy of small gigs (I saw La Dispute and Former Thieves in a tiny room a few weeks ago and it was incredibly intense and great) and there’s all sorts of things to hate about very big gigs. But there’s something I really like about shows of this size (what I believe we call “theatre” size. Nowhere near an arena but a fair few steps up from the upstairs of small pubs) when lots of people you know are there. There’s something lovely about having, as well as the group of friends you came with (and for both LCD and Brand New this was a pretty big group), scattered throughout the crowd, friendly faces and people you kind of know and it feels communal in a very different way to the tiny gig of the tiny band you and your best friends love. It feels like you are momentarily part of something.
One nice thing about LCD Soundsystem shows vs. most indie rock shows: People are entirely unafraid to dance.
One nice thing about emo shows vs. most indie rock shows: People are entirely unafraid to sing along.
Hell, it’s encouraged - Jesse let the crowd take the entire first verse of “Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don’t” and regularly thanked them for their participation. And I love big sing alongs. I don’t know if people think that’s cheesy or they find it annoying or whatever, but I just do. The sound of a big number of human voices working together is lovely and, as a lyrics-obsessive, there’s something great about this mass worship of Words. Of loving some words so much that you are totally comfortable with screaming them back to the man who wrote them, with a volume that shreds your throat and makes talking a bit painful the day after.
They’re both bands who walk the line perfectly between passion and perfection in their performances - there are frequent moments of being technically astounding (LCD’s live drums, Brand New’s giant guitar build-ups) and also of just letting loose and fucking off nailing it as it is on the record and just going nuts (Murphy and Lacey both deliver vocals better and more ragged live than on any of their records).
They’re both bands where I love so many of the songs so much that just working out what the song they’re starting is gave me moments of heart fluttering breathtaking gasping excitement. People may mock you for this sort of thing, but would you rather be consumed with joy and love, or be cool? Cool’s pretty boring.
They’re both bands who have a pretty wide ranging style. LCD have straight dance bangers, piano ballad slow jams and everything in between. Brand New started out playing fairly straight (if smarter and sharper than the average) pop-punk, moved on to heart-bearing emo and then progressed through heavy indie rock in to full on post-hardcore. And I like bands that move like that, because it’s how I like music. Be suspicious of anyone who really only likes one type of music**, be suspicious of any band that really only plays one type of music.
So yeah. That Long Island emo band has more in common (as a live experience) with that New York electronic band than you’d think. They both made me very, very happy in big rooms in the tail end of winter.
2012’s going to be all right, you know.
*I mean, I assume. I assume the mass of their fan bases are different but they’re both bands that are quite widely loved in my real world friendship groups. My friends are brilliant.
**Although don’t totally write them off. There are some lovely people who really do just only enjoy one type of music and there’s nothing wrong with that.
