image, via josh

Neumos on Saturday night was full, with the usual cage setup separating the all-ages pit from the bars, but it wasn’t as packed as I had expected it to be. I guess all of the leftover slush kept some people away.

Coconut Coolouts might be the best party band in Seattle. All lined up in a row onstage, they sang about being in party jail, and offered two boys free t-shirts/pizza because of their enthusiasm. They sounded like summer, like they should have covered the stage of Neumos with sand and brought along some beach balls, and they thrilled a crowd that had come prepared to dance.

I was a little worried about the reception that Arthur & Yu would get as they walked onstage, calling themselves the soft filling in the night of rock, but I needn’t have been concerned. They stole my heart back in June [mb], and I think they charmed the pants off of at least some of the Thermals crowd. Their soft and hazy sound was backed up with a lot more rock than it once had, and they have come together perfectly. Sonya Wescott and Grant Olson don’t sound like they’re playing in anyone’s living room anymore–they sound like a touring band poised to become very, very possible. They’re on the road for a few shows, driving through the mountains, and I really hope they come back safely. (Grant didn’t seem so sure that they would.)

But everyone was there for the Thermals, who have an uncomplicated set-up that allowed for a mercifully brief changeover. I’m not sorry that I stayed back behind the fence because the front section of the crowd just completely lost their shit, dancing and moshing and crowd surfing. At one point a guy who, from Josh’s reports at the front of the crowd, had been acting like a total douche climbed up onstage with his camera. The security guard attempted to wrestle him down and the guy broke away and took a flying leap off the stage into the crowd, all of whom stepped aside and let him fall hard to the ground. Which is why you should practice polite moshing, kids.

Hutch actually stopped the show at that point, to make sure everyone was ok, but aside from that glitch the band rocketed on, going through most of their material with barely a pause. There was no way that anyone was going to let them get away without playing an encore, but when they walked back onstage and Hutch announced that they were going to play a Built to Spill song, I was sure that he was joking. He wasn’t, and they played an excellent version of “Big Dipper” all the way through, which by itself was worth the treacherous walk up icy hills to get to the show.

But don’t just take my word for it–Metroblogging’s Ryan was also there, perched above the crowd in the balcony, and he had the following to say:

For some reason I didn’t realize this was an all-ages show and was kind of bummed when I walked into the club. The last several all-ages shows I’ve been to lacked energy. I don’t know if it’s due to the artificial boundary Neumos’ sets up (with that weird sort of DMZ right in the middle of the floor) or if the kids just aren’t sure what to do with themselves at a rock show, yet. Impressively, the kids lead the charge this time - stage diving, moshing, and singing every word to every song The Thermals played.

The Thermals deserve most of the credit for the energy, of course. The combination of their hard driving style and lyrical content (some of which, especially from 2006’s “The Body, The Blood, The Machine”, are described as anti-religious but are quite a bit more subtle/sophisticated than that) resonates at a level deeper than most bands are able to achieve. I mostly stayed perched against the balcony railing and this is the first show I can recall in a long time where I felt it bouncing up and down. It’s also the first show in a long time that I didn’t want to end. The energy was tremendous and The Thermals, despite stopping the show (”I feel like Fugazi,” said singer Hutch Harris) so a would-be stage diver could be dragged off in a full-nelson, seemed to revel in the crowd’s response. At the end, bassist Kathy Foster did the only reasonable thing and high-fived every fan within reach.