OK, so: Seattle and the Liars show.

The first opening act was a band called Nordic. Really bland. Like, so dull. It turns out one of the members is Aaron Hemphill's brother, which I guess explains their prescence on the bill. Still, very dull. The band seemed to exist for no other reason than to make you think the singer was hot. Then I realized that that was probably not the reason the band existed, they were just bland, and had no real reason for existing. I can easily see this band becoming popular, because I have no faith in humanity.

The second band was Young People, who were fucking great. Short songs that changed up a decent amount. Very minimalist trio, as opposed to Nordic, which had... six members maybe? Maybe seven? Anyway, the arrangements switched up. The first two songs featured two guitarists, with the drummer singing. Then the drummer took the bass, for one song. Then one of the guitarists went back to the drums, with the singer remaining on bass. Then she switched it up, and played a violin, or some other small stringed instrument. It was played for dissonance, not melody. Then she played a metal pot with a mallet. Really fucking great stuff. Because of the approach, I got the impression that their lyrics were probably really good as well, which doesn't seem like it makes sense, but I got that impression. If I had money, I would've bought their CD. As it was, the only thing I could afford were Young People panties, but I probably wouldn't have gotten that much mileage out of them. But yeah: Young People = Great. The members seemed to all be in their early thirties, but the lead singer was nonetheless lovely.

Then there was The Get Hustle, who were loud. Liars later described them as "some next level shiznit" which I guess is kind of true. Their drummer was pretty good, when he was being tight with the rhythms, which were interesting, but then there would be times where he would "rock out" at the end of a song, and- bah. They had a keyboardist, who I believe had the keyboard attached to a turntable- I have my theorys for what this was, but they're not based in anything. What was played on the keyboard was very distorted, making up for the lack of distorted guitars. They had this drums/keyboard arrangement, but were pretty metal. This was provided by the distortion and the lead singer, who was- I don't know how to describe her. I was not in love with her, as I was with the singer from Young People. I was pretty much in love with everything about Young People. They were fucking cool. But yeah, singer from The Get Hustle was an excessively tattooed woman with bad hair. She would scream and holler and be like Karen O only loud at all times. She wanted to rock. They were a loud band. I guess they were idiosyncratic and distinctive in terms of arrangement, but... I guess I'd call them art-metal. If art-metal hasn't already been coined, to name other things. Dissonant rocking. Fucking loud. Maybe if it had been quieter I would've liked it more. Well, the vocalist was still pretty over the top, her whole deal was being loud. I didn't like the vocalist, although I did like imagining her beating the shit out of the singer from Nordic. Because high school was so recent, I imagine they had a rivalry and hated each other. Metal girl and boring, fashion woman.

Speaking of fashion people- I think some came in during the show. Very slick people, who seemed like they didn't belong. Like they were going to some danceclub, and then decided to stop in and see how the other have live. By the other half, I don't mean the poor, I mean the dirty and unkempt.

It was Angus' birthday. I tried to sing Happy Birthday when they came out, but they came out to the sound of feedback, and crowd noise. The band: Aaron was dressed like a gay pirate, on the drums. He had an American flag pattern half-shirt. Julian was all normal. Angus came out, with back to audience, wearing a green shirt with a tail pinned to it, and he had some kind of hood or something around his head, keeping all hair in front of his face for the first song. This came off afterward, but hair was often in front of his face, as it is long. He had glasses drawn onto his face. All songs were from the new record, except for two that were new. Although I suppose those could've been from the There's Always Room On The Broom single. They rocked ass.

To people who say that the new record has no grooves, and isn't danceable: No, it is. It still has drums, and the drum rhythms are often quite tight. True: there is a lot of feedback as well. Both of these aspects came to the fore during the show, along with tape effects. It was awesome.

At the end, someone in the audience was talking about how they thought the singer's antics were dumb. The person they were with explained how it was just done to make them seem not approachable, like you're not at an Elliott Smith show. They stood by their opinion that it was dumb.

It wasn't dumb. It was fucking rocking. They might not have been talking about Angus' antics, they could've been talking about Julian. Julian said some stuff that could be construed as assholish- "we apologize for the technical difficulties. No we don't, we don't apologize for anything." "to the person who said something about singing a capella: fuck off" "this is the awkward part of the show, where we're done, but we have one more song to play..." He went into a bit about how encores are bullshit, everyone knows what's up, amps don't even get turned off, there was a line about how "encore is just French for predictable at this point." And then they played They Don't Want your Corn They Want Your Kids, and left the stage to the sound of feedback. They didn't play very long. Other highlights- talking about how in honor of the Seattle, they wrote some good rock songs. Good rock songs means power chords to open, and then feedback. Aaron seemed the most amiable, making jokes and stuff, but none of the band seemed like assholes to me, and this is coming from someone who thinks that Sub Pop are assholes.

Would it have been better to see them when they had a bassist? I don't know. Like, it would've been great if they had done some songs from the first record. But still, the grooves were still there, and now there was feedback too. Dancing and noise. That's a concert that leaves you satisfied.