The Future Is Mine (Part Two)

(You should read Part One first.)

The Shout Out Louds show itself, did I mention this, was phenomenal, and you know I don't use that word lightly. The last time I saw them perform it was as a perfunctory opening act - employed to warm up the crowd and kill time before more people filled the hall, which they did with grace and power at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco for The Dears a couple months back - great show, but The Dears sucked, so exhaustingly melodramatic, and you know that's saying something coming from a Sinead fan (and speaking of extreme melodrama, you have to click on the link, I just noticed she's now calling it the 'Healing Site', poor poor tragic soul).

With this performance the SOLs finally had the ability to cull together a set as a performance, using lighting and their set list to construct a complete show. (It also helped that everyone there had actually come to see them, so I wasn't the only fool hollering and gesticulating spastically).

Right from song one I was impressed by the SOLs decision to immediately dispense with the two songs that could be considered their most popular (if they had ever been played more than twice on the radio). The two songs anyone might know were simply played and discarded and the band moved on to their real performance, busting out third with "Never Ever", an amazing anthem and personal favorite buried at the end of the album they released in Scandinavia two years ago - no one would know it, which made the fact they would play such a song so great: they weren't trying to market their album, you couldn't buy that album in the US, - they were showcasing, and I thought, doing a damn good job of it.

What's also wonderful about such a small band and such a humble venue as the Mercury Lounge is before and after the show the band was able to casually mingle among the crowd, with few freaks like me to disturb them. There was no backstage, the band literally had to wade through the crowd to go on or off stage - which made for an interesting encore performance.

At one point I saw the lead singer simply standing at the bar talking to a nordic looking princess. I was too nervous to talk to him - I know, lame - but when he left I approached her and asked if they were going together. 'Going where?' she replied. They are going together it turns out, so I told her I was hoping he was gay. She said he gets that a lot - Scandinavian thing.

Now maybe if I just do that ten more times I'll become friends with the band somehow and they'll take me on tour with them and let me one time play the tambourine and sell t-shirts. I'd be really good at it if by any chance they end up reading this...I even have a marketing background - email me at this site, I'll send a resume and headshot immediately.

In replace of playing the few songs people might know the words to for their encore the lead singer simply returned to stage with the band's smoke-eyed diva of multiple instruments (keyboards, tambourine, xylophone, harmonica) and played a soft ballad that the other band members progressively added to as they returned to the stage, culminating in a minor-epic crescendo that resolved directly into the energized and playful My Friend With the Ink on His Fingertips and the band finished with its only sparse and epic song Seagull (9 minutes) ending the set on the electronic screechings of the band's signature seagulls.