The opening band for Verbena was The Dress Rehearsal, a band based out of
Rockford, IL but with a member who attends UW-Madison. We'd seen them play
before with local favorites the Driftless Pony Club, and they've since gotten a
new (and much better) drummer. The Dress Rehearsal is pretty much your standard
Madison indie-rock band, with drums, two guitars and a bass. The lead singer's
voice reminded me of the singer of Hey Mercedes, though not quite as strong, and
musically they often sounded like a really rocking Death Cab for Cutie (Photo
Album Death Cab, not We Have the Facts . . .). I'd say they were good
opening band material. Later the drummer with the crazy shirt came over to chat
with us, and apparently they have a new cd coming out and they had opened with
the first song off that album, "This Is Only a Test." You can hear it on their
website,
www.dressrehearsal.net.
Up next was Spymob, the band we actually came to see, though they were not the
headliner. At this point, the audience was about 30 people pretty much made up
of us, friends of the Dress Rehearsal, and some really weird (and rude) Verbena
fans. Not exactly the greatest crowd. I actually would never have known Spymob
was coming to Madison if I hadn't been on the Dress Rehearsal email list; this
show got very little publicity, the Spymob website hadn't been updated recently,
and both Pollstar and the Annex website only had Verbena listed, which is
surprising since Spymob is from Minneapolis and Madison seems to embrace the
midwestern bands. Plus, they are the backing band for N.E.R.D., which you'd
think would get them some publicity. But anyway, on to their show. Spymob has a
really cool sound, kind of a mix of country/rock/pop/jazz/R&B. I especially love
the singer's voice, it's really smooth and he has a good falsetto, and I'm
always a sucker for a band with a keyboard or piano. They played most of the
songs that are available for download on their website,
spymob.com (their album Sitting Around
Keeping Score will be coming out in July or August), except 2040, which is
what I wanted to hear of course. The singer prefaced I Still Live at Home
with, "this song is funny to play in college towns, because it seems to ring
true." Of course everyone looked at me (Two more days!!! Only two more days!). I
realized that the beginning of that song really reminds me of Adam Sandler's
I'll Grow Old With You. But in a good way. Finally, they ended with what is
apparently going to be the single off their upcoming album, It Gets Me Going,
which they claim is about a dog and has an incredibly catchy chorus. Sadly, I
think we were the only ones in the bar who appreciated their performance, though
after seeing Verbena, we could kind of see why.
I couldn't think of three more different bands to have play together. Liz had
checked out a couple Verbena songs before we came and wasn't too impressed, but
we thought we'd give them a chance. Their big thing was that they're now on
Capitol Records. "Yeah have you heard of Verbena? They're on Capitol Records."
"Hi, we're Verbena, and we're on Capitol Records." I'm not sure what kind of
credibility that was supposed to give them. They came out looking like part of
the Strokes hanging out with part of Saliva. When I heard them talk, I thought
they were from some foreign country. Actually, they're from Alabama, which is
foreign enough for me. The Dress Rehearsal drummer said he'd listened to some
songs on their website and thought they sounded a bit like Nirvana, but less
"raw." Their first song fit that description pretty well. I'd call it
"tolerable." Unfortunately, the band was way, way, waaaaaay too loud, and I had
suck up my pride and cover my ears. Apparently our new friend the Dress
Rehearsal drummer noticed this and brought me over some earplugs. By that point
though, each successive song was louder, harder, darker, and more painful to
hear (figuratively and literally, with the bass resonating like crazy throughout
my entire body). There's a possibility I might have blacked out from the pain
between the second song and the earplug offering. Finally we decided we couldn't
take it any more and left. I'm probably being a little harsh. Upon going home
and listening to their songs on their website, I'd say they are just your
standard, mediocre rock band. The biggest problem was just how loud they were.
No big deal, since we weren't really there to see them anyway. So overall, well
worth the $7.
