Took my first trip to the Stan Mansion last night for some rock n roll, quite a strange place for a show, but not too shabby. It is basically a house a few blocks south of Logan Square, and is just in some ballroom in this giant house. It has the same “place where they hold prom” look to it that Logan Square Auditorium has, and I think they do hold gala events and stuff there. It was odd for sure, but kind of cool, you could walk around to the side of the band and see them from backstage essentially, which was good because the stage was very low so it was hard to see from the front of the crowd. Anyway, when I arrived the Evangelicals were already up there laying some horror movie indie rock on the crowd.

They were pretty good I thought. I had previously read about them having a very old school horror movie feel to them (ghoulishness, or something) and I think that is pretty accurate. They had these ghoulish green and blue lights lighting the stage and a smoke machine providing spooky effects. But the music was very good, and it wasn’t just a hokey gimmicky kind of show. Beneath the kind of first glance perception, there were some really solid songs in there, and I thoroughly enjoyed their set. They had a great mix up of melodramatic moments with kind of goofy moments, and rocked it out in between those. They were very solid, and after they had finished Frog Eyes took the stage.

Frog Eyes, like the other 2 bands here, I am not overly familiar with. I know they have been around a while and are from Canada, but that’s about it, but I really dug their performance here. It kind of struck me as sort of modern mountain man rock (Blitzen, Fleet Foxes) meets “Weld”-era Neil Young and Sonic Youth. There were many moments where Carey Mercer (the lead singer) just basically howls and hoots at the microphone, and then the band jumps in and blitzes you with distortion for a few minutes. It is the type of thing that I’m sure a lot of people don’t really like, but being that I was a huge fan of “Weld” and Sonic Youth, I love this kind of stuff. The 6 minute fuzz box noise solo is just something that I can really get behind. I certainly would see these guys again, and I thought their performance was the best of the bands for the night, because it was the most unique for sure, and the most interesting musically. They also put a lot of energy into the show also, and you can tell that Mercer is up there in some kind of trance like state of rock n roll, just going crazy. I loved it. You just can’t beat falsetto howls and hoots backdropped with a giant fuzz ball.

Shearwater came up after them, and they were really good as well. Shearwater is of course most known for the fact that Jonathan Meiburg is the main guy in the band, and he was formerly in Okkervil River, another Austin band, and just recently left that band to fully pursue Shearwater. Although wikipedia indicates that Will Sheff of Okkervil was originally in this band as well, and still lists him as a member, I don’t think he is involved in this band anymore. Anyway, Shearwater is a very different kind of sound from Okkervil in my opinion. Where Okkervil is a very upbeat, high energy kind of indie rock, Shearwater tends much more into the more subdued, dramatic and low key kinds of songs.

They were quite good and hit of course songs from their newly released “Rook”. There was a lot of instrument switching going on during the performance, with Meiburg switching from guitar to keys, and several songs with no drums where the drummer joined the rest of the band up front on an instrument. There were even a few songs where the girl bass player was playing a clarinet and the xylophone at the same time, now that’s impressive. There is a lot of cool instrumentation involved with this band, and they really help flesh out these slow, thoughtful songs, and give them an interesting sound.

All in all, a very solid show at a new venue I had not been to before. All 3 of these bands were quality live so I can pretty well recommend checking any one of them out if you get a chance. They all 3 have albums that have come out recently that are worth checking out as well.

Check out all of my photos from this show here!

Shearwater has a few more dates upcoming on the tour, and then some stints opening for Coldplay apparently (hitting the big time):

06/25/08 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
06/27/08 – Fort Worth, TX @ Lola’s
07/14/08 – Los Angeles, CA @ Great Western Forum, w/ Coldplay
07/15/08 – Los Angeles, CA @ Great Western Forum, w/ Coldplay
07/18/08 – San Jose, CA @ HP Pavillion, w/ Coldplay
07/19/08 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Arena, w/ Coldplay

Shearwater – Leviathan, Bound – From Rook
Frog Eyes – Bushels – From Tears of the Valedictorian
Evangelicals – Party Crashin’ – From The Evening Descends