silversun pickups + viva voce // crocodile cafe // 27 october 2006 (with apologies for the late posting)

Seattle has a great big crush on Silversun Pickups. When I arrive, Viva Voce are playing and the show has sold out.¹ People are already spilling out of the showroom into the cafe and the bar section is nearly abandoned. Everyone’s attention is on the married Portland sort of classic rock duo. At one point, Kevin’s shoe is literally rocked off. Their strongest songs start quiet and strummy and turn surprisingly big. Along they way, they justify their profanity with important life-lessons (”We Do Not Fuck Around” [mp3]). There’s no shortage of appreciation for the band, but it feels both warm and mostly anticipatory.

It seems that the majority of crowd is there for Silversun Pickups. The Los Angeles band has been touring extensively, with several stops in Seattle over the past year. They played the block party this summer, opened for Voxtrot in the spring, and have found there way onto several other setlists throughout the year. Tonight, they’re collecting the dividends on their investment. Not only are they completely on top of their game musically, with confident stage presence, rolling guitar lines, and an incredibly high high hat, but the crowd is primed to adore every minute of it. In fact, often the breaks between songs are extended to accommodate all of the rambunctious applause, which seems persists for minutes.

Listening to their CDs, one might imagine that Brian Aubert’s voice has been run through a few computer algorithms to achieve such otherworldy sounds. But live, the same smeared, channeled from a nearby dimension rasp is still there. While singing, he seems thrilled with the crowd’s response and is otherworldly and his triumphant facial expressions are off the charts. Between songs and applause breaks, he cracks obscure Lord of the Rings trivia jokes with girls in the green room, ² which delights all of the middle earth fans in attendance.

In what seems like a grand finale moment (they’d already played mp3blog EP hit, “Kissing Families” after all), Viva Voce climbs onstage helps to turn the proceedings (”Lazy Eye”, I think) into a massive rock party. Yet, Silversun Pickups audaciously follow up with a few more songs before the audience goes wild for more. When they return, they bring out Gareth from the Kingdom. It’s the second-to-the-last night of their tour and he’s just been named MVP. To celebrate, he takes a tremendous stage dive and gets passed around for a while. I think that he spent much of the Pikul-centric encore on the stage’s floor. Nikki Monninger sings “Creation Lake” and it’s all over.

Never fear, they’ll be back later this year with Wolfmother.

–

1. big thanks to Silversun Pickups’s publicist for last minute tickets.
2. speaking of the green room, maybe it’s time for the crocodile to invest in a secret passageway so that bands don’t need to force their way through the crowd to get onto the stage?