Army Navy, The Takeover UK, The Shys @ Union Hall, Oct. 29, 2008
By eh
It was a disgusting night last night, but a good crowd made it out to Union Hall for the show. Though it did seem like much of the audience knew the bands personally.
The Shys were up first. They were pleasant. They have kind of a good ole boy, country feel, tempered by an L.A. slickness. They're good singers and they have some nice harmonies.
I don't know why I'm noticing this kind of thing so much lately, but The Shys drummer totally wailed on the skins. He's really energetic and loud.
Overall, their set was diverting. At one point, one of their songs had a riff that sounded a lot like "Can You Picture That?" Over the course of their set, the band's sound migrated from country-tinged to angry pop. I like the less angry songs better.
The lead singer is cute in a wholesome way, and he sings with real passion.
More after the jump.
Before their last song, the lead singer really brought home the reality of being a touring band with the following exchange:
[Singer announces that there's band merch available]
Audience dude yells, "I'm buying a shirt!"
Singer: "I like that guy ... He let our keyboardist sleep on his couch last night."
The next band up was the Takeover UK (which I did not know until this morning), another all-male quartet. They started off their set asking everyone to get quiet (which we more or less did) as they did some acoustic jam. The audience was a little underwhelmed, but we got on board when they switched to plugged in instruments.
Again, they've got some nice harmonies.
Verbatim from my notebook: "I like these guys, whoever they are. They're very happy-making to listen to." It's kind of a sixties garage rock sound, with fat, prominent bass lines.
Halfway through their set, a girl in the crowd asks if they want people to dance. "Of course we want people to dance," came the response from the stage. And we did, kind of. As much as Brooklyn hipsters are capable of it, anyway.
My one quibble with the band is that their name is impossible to understand when they mumble it into the microphone. It sounded like Tiger View, which makes no sense as a band name.
Army Navy, the band I made it all the way to BK to see, was up next. And the lead singer was siiiiiiiick. Not in a slang way. You could hear it in his singing (he actually made a Peter Brady joke before at the start of the set), although the playing held up admirably.
Their half set (they called it after four or five songs, at which point you could just tell the singer was miserable) was pretty good. It was obvious that the singer was hurting, even without the apologies after every song. The instrumentals were tight, and the songs themselves were good — at full power they must be a great band.
It was a valiant effort.
