img of Cord Amato from WF’s [myspace]

I wasn’t sure what to expect out of the Wow & Flutter show at the Skylark Cafe and Club [#] last night. I did get the show info from Josh, but let’s be honest, who reads those things? Well, maybe you do, but I get bored about two sentences in and never can focus past time, place, and date. Now, even though the Skylark is on my side of the bay, I have only been there once, way back when it first opened, so I was unsure what to expect venue-wise either.

The opening band Seattle-based, Goodbye Victoria, could have been good, but I really couldn’t tell. They were missing one of their band-mates and either the drummer was overcompensating for the lack of bass or the sound guy didn’t care or some combination of the two because daaamn, all I could hear was SNARE! SNARE! SNARE! I was a little bummed, because in the few times I could hear something besides the aforementioned snare drum, it sounded like something I’d like.

The weird thing about it all was that the sound was pretty good for Wow & Flutter. Perhaps it was because there were three people and many more instruments than a drum set and guitar and thus more mics and balance. In any case, I was glad. I didn’t think I could sit through another drummer and his back-up guitar and vocals.

Wow & Flutter is a Portland band that has been around - according to the Internets - for about a decade. I’d be hard-pressed to label the band as one sound or another. I heard garage rock, early Cure, my friend said, “Space Rock,” others have mentioned Indie Rock and Punk. The band was very energetic and technically proficient…especially the drummer, who, might I add, wasn’t pounding the crap out of his set. The first couple of songs were pretty great. I liked their opener Red Face quite a bit and it looked like the band was having a great time.

Let’s pause for a minute. Here’s where I admit to being a cranky old lady or maybe a 5 year old would be more accurate. I…I really hate it when a song lasts for-freaking-ever. Much like my inability to read a full release about a band - if a song goes on and on (and on), I get bored.

That said, Wow & Flutter played for 40 minutes about and only played about 5 songs. They were good songs…in the beginning…but - and really this is my failing not theirs - they were too long. I hit my limit of freaky guitar sounds pretty early and started to think about the 10 minutes too long ending of 2001 (which I just saw at SIFF cinema [#] a couple of weeks ago), about the two girls dancing, um, suggestively at the front, and about whether the lady sitting in front of me was the mother of one of the band members.

I also had ample to think about the dessert special there at the Skylark, which last night was deep fried hostess pie served ala mode. My friend immediately declared the dessert gross, but I find the whole thing intriguing. Do they batter? And if not, does the icing melt away in the fry basket? Frankly, I should have ordered one, then maybe I would have stayed around for the third band. As it was, I waited out the last song, which should have been titled “we don’t want to leave but we’re out of notes so we’ll just shake our guitars to make feedback” and nabbed the bus back to my old folks’ home.
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PS If my idiosyncracies haven’t put you off, please check out the bands at their myspace pages:
- Goodbye Victoria [#]
- Wow & Flutter [#]