(Last Night's Review) The Drums/Surfer Blood - The Clubhouse, Tempe, AZ

Last night. Rock show. Two bands. Actually three. But I missed the first local band. Young Friends. Picture at left is Surfer Blood (read below). Only picture that turned out decent. Blame my Sprint cell phone cam. That's OK - Much video below.

Walked in on The Drums' first song. Found young men prancing feyly onstage. With pre-taped whistles (and more??) in the mix. Big echo-laden mix. Much reminiscent of Smiths/Chameleons UK/Suede (some of my fave British bands). Their Wikipedia page reads (in part): "The band cite their major influences as The Smiths, Joy Division, The Wake, The Zombies, The Tough Alliance, The Legends, The Shangri-las and Orange Juice. Graham also mentions that reverb in general has played a major role in their sound: "...If reverb didn´t exist we wouldn´t have bothered trying to start a band." See the band on Twitter.

Bass player playing tiny bass. Guitarist looking like young Peter Buck REMlike. Took pictures and all were blurry (sorry, Sarah). Strong set which got stronger. Only lapse was last two songs. Maybe PHX heat was getting best of them on last two songs, which lagged a bit and brought momentum down. I liked The Drums, would see them again. Singer seemed to be playing to an audience in the stars (or in his head). That's OK, not necessarily a bad thing. Connecting with audience is not always job requirement. Drummer wasn't getting enough monitors. Band kept asking. Not sure if request was granted.

My first time seeing Surfer Blood too. Green lasers shooting from stage left. Bubble machine from stage right. Happy youngsters. See the band on Twitter.
Two new songs - I liked the first one alot - glistening arpeggio intro into a beat-heavy jump, flowered by a bridge or chorus (or both?) with about 30 chords in it. Whew!

All the good stuff from Astro Ghost was played - Harmonix, Swim, etc. Big fun for me was for an encore, singer/guitarist John Paul came out and sang and played Guided By Voices' "Game of Pricks" solo, complete with guitar solo. It was perfect. Then more bubbles, laser, closing song and a happy crowd out the door.

Local music cool people Silverplatter taped most of the show:

Here's a clip of the Young Friends:


Here's part 1 of The Drums:


Here's part 2 of The Drums:


Surfer Blood Pt. 1:


Surfer Blood part 2: