all photos: Lexie Moreland: from last time
Last Thursday, I made my way through biblical rains to the Black Cat to see Oxford Collapse and openers Takka Takka. The backstage was mostly empty as Takka Takka began, but quickly filled up. Their particular brand of earthy, polyrhythmic pop isn’t the most well-suited to keeping people from falling asleep, but the occasional epic swell of noise made up for their unfortunate tendency to linger around in boring-mid-tempo-land. It also didn’t help that singer Gabriel Levine tended far too often to depart from the melodies on the album in favor of awkwardly shouting the lyrics out of time while dancing around the stage like a poor man’s Bono.
Closing your eyes meditatively and clapping along passionately may work when you’re playing in front of 90,000 people, but in a setting where the audience is about nine inches removed, it comes off a bit forced. Nonetheless, all the members of the band are incredibly tight, especially the drummer, who, with his constantly-evolving hydraulic pounding, managed to keep the forty-five minute set, almost entirely culled from the recently-released Migration from sounding too homogenous.
After a short break, Oxford Collapse took the stage and launched into their supercharged set of poppy punk songs. They zipped through most of August’s Bits (Sub Pop), leaving nary a hipster remaining stationary in their place. The set was a marked improvement over Takka Takka’s, if only because their performance, like all the other times I’ve seen them, is filled with an energy I’m surprised they’re able to channel, let alone replicate night after night. The Brooklyn threesome also managed to add a bit of levity to the proceedings, remarking that “Please Visit Your National Parks,” off 2006’s Remember The Night Parties, is “the song you’ve all been waiting for… the song that made us whatever it is we are.”
The audience was completely entranced by them, and at the end of what turned out to be an unexpectedly mature slow-burner of a finale, they created a flurry of noise that sounded way bigger than the 30 or so people in the room. The band finished the night with an encore the ended with “Electric Arc,” the rousing, borderline-annoyingly catchy opener off of Bits. After they were done, they made their way around the room, probably trying to get someone to put them up for the night, something they said earlier in the night they’d need to do.
I’ve seen Oxford Collapse three times now and it always surprises me that more people don’t show up to see them, especially with the reputation they have for absolutely stellar performances. They seem to have a genuine love for playing music and my assumption is they’ll be roaming all over the place sharing it with whoever will listen for as long as they possibly can.
this was a great show. i’m def more of a fan now that i have seen them .. i just hadn’t given them much of a listen before, despite my bf being totally into them.
anyhow, i wouldn’t be surprised if people are getting oxford collapse show fatigue (if thats possible). they’ve been here three times in the last three months and they already have at least one more show lined up in baltimore before the year is done.
September 29, 2008 at 12:41 pm