catl (Steamboat / Youth Crime)
The Horseshoe Tavern. Friday, February 11, 2011.
Good-sized crowd on hand as I rolled into The 'Shoe with three-piece Youth Crime just about to get underway. From the looks of things, they had a lot of friends and vocal supporters come out, including a couple with home-made signs. The trio came equipped with dual guitar action plus drums, and a lot of the songs featured shared lead vocals in front of a minimalist rattle and clang. They were rocking to a ragged rhythm chug that was sometimes a little nervously stiff. The upshot of all that was that they had a bit of a Gun Club sort of thing going on — a couple songs sounded at the outset like they could have been covers of "Sex Beat". When they actually did play a cover — of X's "The World's a Mess; It's in My Kiss" — it was almost just as on point.
I liked some of the elements here, and there was something to songs like "Pick Up Your Feet" or "Nerve Endings". So it was enjoyable, but I wasn't totally convinced — some of the songs felt a bit too spare, to the point of sounding incomplete. They had a notion of how they wanted the guitars to work off each other, but went to the well maybe a bit too much with what they were doing, and songs like "You'll Change Your Mind" quickly zipped by without leaving too much of an impression.
Still, closer "Sharron" finished things off on a high and gave a notion of what the band might be capable of. Watching them, I thought this was a band that could develop into something given some time; but as of now that looks like it's not to be, as an announcement for their most recent show announced it was to be their last. But I'm sure the lessons learned here will be applied in the musicians' next projects.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Given that this was billed as a co-headlining show, I was expecting a decent-sized set from Steamboat. Although the band has but two EP's to their name, they actually have a pretty fair-sized stockpile of yet-to-be released material, which on this night would be supplemented by a couple brand-new ones. The set started with the half-dozen members of the core band on stage to generate their warm and soulful sound, with a funky undercurrent that implies at any given moment that the band could start channelling either The Band or Booker T. & The MG's.1
With pretty much no letup between songs, the band moved through some of their "classic" material — "How Long" was an early highlight here. After a half-dozen songs, the band was joined by the three-man horn section (including Joe Shabason and Jeremy Strachan) which always moves things up another gear. Tearing into the funky "Bread and Butter", the crowd was picking up on the dance-party vibe. Giving them a breather, there was one song that was new to me ("Not an Omen, Just a Warning") that was slowed-down to start before building up momentum. That was matched by another new one, with the irrepressible Maylee Todd on co-lead vox.
By set's end, the floor was filled in with increasingly wobbly dancers, some sloppy drunk to get their weekend going. Meanwhile, the band closed out the fifty-minute set with a soulful run through The Sonics' "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark". Clearly they could have gone on longer, but one supposed they wanted to leave the crowd with enough energy to keep dancing for the headliners.
A couple selections from this set: you can check out an older tune here or a newer one here.
Taking the stage at half-past midnight, catl launched into their set with more showmanship than I'm used to from the no-frills band. Drummer Johnny LaRue (rockin' a fine mid-period Castro/ hoax-addled Joaquin Phoenix beard) began alone on stage, launching into a taut groove before Sarah Kirkpatrick (keyb/vox) danced onto the stage, and they were eventually followed by Jamie Fleming, who plugged in his guitar and joined in for a long intro groove. "Don't drop your drinks, y'know what I'm sayin'," he muttered as the shuffle resolved into a tearin' version of R.L. Burnside's "Poor Black Mattie". That bit of stagecraft shouldn't be interpreted as meaning that the band has gotten slick all of a sudden — it's all still in the service of their leering, drunken blues grind, and even if they're getting a bit more professional (the merch table was selling the band's brand-new t-shirts) this is still a band that will play on your porch for a bottle of tequila.
Nestled around a few tracks from last year's very tasty With the Lord for Cowards You Will Find No Place, there was some newer material, like "Gotta Thing For You", (a vocal spot for Kirkpatrick which I don't think I'd heard before), and "5 Miles" (which has been around for a little longer). The band's tight arrangements co-existed with verge-of-falling-apart execution (Kirkpatrick poked fun at Fleming for launching into a "tuning solo" midsong during "Church on Time").
And meanwhile, the floor was packed in tight with dancing, clapping people blowing off Friday night steam, their refreshment increasingly overtaking their rhythm as the night went on — at one point, I had several people on different sides of me clapping at different off-beat times, like they were all unintentionally re-enacting that first scene from The Jerk. The set kept on with song after song: the new "Waiting List Blues" (which came across a a little undercooked); the Hasil Adkins two-fer of "Get Out of My Car" and "Chicken Walk"; and the excellent "Hold My Body Down".
As the band plowed along and the hour grew late the crowd thinned out somewhat, which I must admit brought me a sense of relief. There was a pair of back to back "Cocaine Blues", with Kirkpatrick handling the slowed-down traditional version ("I woke up this mornin', I had a hungry pain / And all I wanted for breakfast was some good old cocaine") followed by the band's own more rip-roarin' version. After seventy sweaty minutes, by the time the band finished with "Workin' Man's Soul", the room was a lot quieter, and whether it was the crowd's exhaustion or depleted numbers, there wasn't a general call for the band to come back, so that was the night.
It was a solid-enough set from the band, but a bit of a grinding blue-collar effort in places. To cap things off, when I went to grab my parka, I found that someone had spilled beer all down the sleeve. An occupational hazard of attending to raucousness, I suppose.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem are another big influence here, and given a recent high-profile Muppet covers album it's worth noting that Steamboat were way ahead of the curve in that department.
2 Details are sketchy at the moment, but word from the catl camp is that you should be keeping October 14 & 15 clear — one might guess that the band's forthcoming new album might be getting a big-ass release celebration on those nights.
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