Bishop Allen (and Starlight Mints) @ BoCA 11/9
I went to see Bishop Allen (their myspace page) on Thursday at the Bar of Contemporary Art. They were the second of three on the bill, the headliners being the Starlight Mints.
If you don’t know Bishop Allen, check out some of their mp3s on their webpage or listen to the ones I’m going to hand pick for you:
Bishop Allen – Same Fire [from June] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Flight 180 [from April] (mp3)
Bishop Allen – Things are What you Make of Them [from Charm School](mp3)
They’ve announced (and so far followed through with, though sometimes a bit delayed) a plan to release an EP for every month until they release their next EP. I can’t imagine doing this, especially for months when they’re touring. I may or may not have bought all the months EPs they had for sale at the show (January-August). I’ll possibly post a review of all of them later.
Bishop Allen went on after a somewhat clever but ultimately unexciting opener. The stage at BoCA is basically tiny, so the drums were off to one side, instead of the usual behind-the-leadman and the bass player and guitarist were behind the drums. Sort of an odd set up. I feel like I’m fairly unfamiliar with Bishop Allen—I’ve only listen to Charm School a few times and then the mp3s that they’ve offered up for the month EPs, but somehow I went through the set knowing most of the songs they played (maybe all but two). That’s always kind of nice, knowing the songs a band is playing.
They played well. Particularly I liked the versions of “Busted Heart”, “Same Fire”, “Flight 180” they did. It was a fun and energy-filled set.
After Bishop Allen, the bar cleared out before Starlight Mint came up and continued clearing out throughout their set to the point where about forty people were left. The sound for the first part of their set was really badl; well the vocals were too low for the whole set but sound at the beginning was particularly muddy. They did a number of halloweeny or horror movie sounding songs at the beginning and that, combined with the muddy sound, put me off for most of their set. I must say I liked the last few songs they did.