Mink – 4/10/08 – Niagara Falls

From Down Under to Over the Falls – Mink plays NF
Mink in Niagara Falls – apblake.com
Provided by: buffalo.com/yourhub Andrew Blake

Contributed by: buffalo.com/yourhub Andrew Blake on 4/14/2008

“There’s a lot of love in the room tonight!” exclaimed an optimistic Neal Carlson. If love was people, by my count the number would be somewhere around forty. That is, that’s the amount of people who had the esteem fortune of catching Carlson’s group, Mink, perform from the stage at Niagara Fall’s Hard Rock Cafe. Even if most of the love in the room was focused on Jim Morrison’s framed pants, Mink treated the show as if it were a packed house. Even a packed house that served ten dollar hamburgers.

Fresh from a stint opening for Perry Farrell’s Satellite Party and even a slot on his coveted Lollapalooza festival in Chicago last summer, Mink is continuing to tour the states in support of their self-titled debut album, which included a stop at the Hard Rock on Friday.

In under an hour, Mink managed to tear through most of the material from their album, including “New York Summer” and “Dematerialize.” Despite the lack of a large crowd, the overly energetic wait staff and the few who made the show danced for the group’s first single, “Talk to Me,” putting several fifteen dollar margaritas at risk of destruction.

While most of Mink’s music is best categorized as straight up rock and roll, their performance of “American Authors” could easily had been passed off as Buzzcocks cover thanks to Carlson’s tremolo vocal delivery. “Pressure Pressure” took new form as bassist Grant Fitzpatrick led the tune into a new direction, carrying the song on a bass-line that transformed the song into an epic trance, worthy of Farrell’s old group, Jane’s Addiction.

For their encore, the group covered David Bowie’s “Suffragette City,” doing the song way more justice than one would imagine. Such a risky cover could be considered blasphemy by some, especially had the group not been able to rip the tune as flawlessly as they did.

“My friends ask me what they sing, and I tell them ‘Nothing you would know,’ but they’re great!” explained Susan Swiatkowski, sales and marketing manager of the Hard Rock, who likened the group to fellow Aussie-imports Jet. While not many people had the pleasure of catching the group, perhaps just because they also don’t know who they are, the few dozen that put down their forks for a minute certainly enjoyed it.

“Did you hear that? Someone said ‘Good job,’” remarked percussionist Stella Mozgowa from the drum riser. Even if it was quiet enough for the band to pick out each audience member’s remark, clearly those on the stage and off were enjoying themselves.

-Andrew Blake

I know that’s an old story, but I just added photos today.
You can check them out here

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The Fleshtones – 4/10/08 – Buffalo

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Colin Meloy – 4/18/08 – Buffalo

From buffalo.com/yourhub:

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”

English majors will attest, the preceding is a grammatically sound example of how homonyms and homophones can interrelate to fuse complicated constructs.
If that’s too high brow for you, that’s okay; Colin Meloy loves talking down to his crowd.

When the “Decemberist” frontman came to town last Spring with his band, he lectured the audience on the complexities of the English language with the same example. Thirteen months later, Meloy returned to Buffalo last week to play The Tralf. Right away, Meloy revisited his pretentious grad-student persona and before even striking a note on his acoustic, or sipping from his glass of red wine, he gave us all a little English lesson.

The Decemberists made a gimmick out of being too smart for indie rock, and for awhile now, it’s worked marvelously. Without his band to carry the pace though, Melloy’s performance on Friday quickly became redundant and dull, and yes, as ostentatious and you might imagine.

“I’ll try my best to entertain and enthrall you,” boasted Melloy through a grinned, sarcastic smirk. While the crowd laughed it up, Meloy’s performance on Friday night did seem not that far from “phoned-in”. While I might not sum up the show as exactly enthralling, it was undoubtedly what everyone expected as they walked into the Tralf: Colin Meloy playing Decemberist songs without the Decemberists.

Unfortunately, as much of Meloy’s exaggerated syllabic pronunciation and twanged verbal delivery has been a key to his group’s success, without the instrumentation of his band behind him, Meloy’s set fell short of being as entertaining as one might hope for.

On his past few tours with his band, it appeared that most of the group’s back catalog was ignored in lieu of performing hits from their more commercially successful recent albums. On the contrary, Melloy opened his set right up with “California One/ Youth and Beauty Brigade” from their 2002 debut Castaways and Cutouts, and continued to perform from deep within the Decemberist catalog for most of the show, a very nice treat.

Meloy even played two new songs, either of which was officially titled as of the performance. “I’m going to play some new songs…I’m here for me,” Melloy told the crowd. Even if his impression was supposed to be sarcastic, it’s hard to help believe what Melloy’s intentions really are. After a handful of “lyrical flubs” with older songs, it took a while before the singer really fell into a groove on the stage. “O Valencia,” from his group’s most recent release “The Crane Wife” received an outstanding response from the crowd, as did “A Cautionary Song” and “Shiny,” more tunes from albums past.

By the time Meloy left the stage following an anticlimactic finale, it was really hard to argue toward the outcome of the evening. Yes, it was exactly what you would expect, but is that really good enough? Meloy certainly knows what he is doing, but without his group to back him up, the singer failed short of anything a full Decemberists gig could have delivered.

-Andrew Blake

Doug Stanhope – 4/19/08 – Buffalo

Doug Stanhope @ Nietzche’s, Buffalo