"Concert Report: Versus, +/-, Fiver, The Rum Diary (noisepop!)": 03/03/2002

03/03/2002 Entry: "Concert Report: Versus, +/-, Fiver, The Rum Diary (noisepop!)"

An afternoon show at Bottom of the Hill. I wanted to see Versus after seeing Whysall Lane play a while ago, since it seemed some of his best songs were Versus songs. An afternoon show is really strange, though, and not really as good as the traditional evening show. It also seemed really early after getting back late from Friday's show. Luckily, BOTH is an easy club to get to, since we wound up getting there a little late.

We got there in the middle of the set by The Rum Diary, but at first it didn't seem like we were missing much. It was reasonable - I decided keyboards can add a lot to a band's sound - but not very engaging. Each song they played, though, was a little better than the last one. Maybe they were growing on me? For the finale they all switched to play drums, which was kind of neat, although they all had to face away from the crowd which was a little weird. So, I wasn't totally won over, but I think they have some potential.

Next up was Fiver (note that that link should work, but they cruelly redirect you to the homepage and you have to click on "Bands" then "Fiver" for it to work. What the hell?) which, don't be fooled, actually contains six people. It took me a little while to get used to the singer's voice, which seemed a little different from what I would have expected from the instrumentals, which were a lot harder. They had a reasonable sound, although a lot of their songs turned into very intense noises at the end, which made my friend go find the earplugs at the bar a couple of songs in.

Next up was +/-, one of the bands that formed out of Versus. At this point I wondered if I was really just getting cranky from lack of sleep, because I didn't really get in to them. I think I may have enjoyed them more if I had known the music already, since the vocals were very hard to understand. They had a few songs that seemed OK, but nothing really that interesting.

Finally it was time for Versus, for which my expectations had dropped considerably after not getting in to +/-. They turned out to be all right, though, although I still would have probably done better if I had known the songs going in. I think I liked the Whysall Lane show more because it was just one person and I could hear the vocals much better. Am I getting old or something? Here, with the full band, the sound was a little overwhelming at times. I probably would have enjoyed hearing more songs with the female singer, too, since she had a pretty good voice.

Overall, not the greatest show I have seen this week, but I think it suffered from extremely sub-optimal conditions. After this we decided to not go to Sunday's early show so we could catch up on some sleep - which should improve our enjoyment of the evening show.