Travis Morrison - "Represent" (mp3)*
I like the fact that there's a decent rock club within a 15-minute walk of my apartment now, but since I moved back to Fells Point last year, I've only gone to Fletcher's twice, both times in the past two weeks, to see the Travis Morrison on Thursday, and before that Private Eleanor. That's mainly because the number of Fletcher's shows I'm even remotely interested in seeing dropped dramatically around the time that the Ottobar moved to a larger location a few years ago and started booking the same size bands. Also, the year's almost half over, and out of the dozen or so shows I've seen this year, Thursday was only the 2nd one where a Baltimore artist wasn't the headliner and/or the act I was primarily there to see. I've just been really locally focused lately. And Travis is from D.C. so it's not even really far off.
I got there just as the first band, Madman Films, were playing the second-to-last song of their set. It sounded pretty cool, in a stereotypical DC way (like a composite of a bunch of Dischord bands with Shudder To Think-esque vocals), but then their last song was long and plodding and I kinda wished I'd seen more of their other songs. The second band, Cataract Camp, were alright. Every member of the band except the bassist sang, and the drummer had a headset mic, not a Janet Jackson-style one, but hanging from a headband directly in front of his face, which just looked super nerdy and probably uncomfortable. As a drummer, I have to respect anyone who can play and sing at the same time, because I know when I'm playing I'm too out of breath to even speak, and well, forget about being that coordinated. But the guy had a voice that was so annoying that it's hard not imagining that he was trying to sound annoying on purpose, like that scene in Dumb And Dumber where Lloyd asks if you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world. And they also had a really obnoxious sense of humor, saying stuff like "this song is about..." and then making up something inane, before every single song. That said, I liked what was going on in some of their songs musically.
The Travis Morrison Hellfighters are the band that Travis formed about a year and a half ago, after the initial keyboard-heavy touring band for Travistan, that he began writing an entirely new set of songs with. I saw them a couple times last year, and the first time I was pretty impressed by the new band and the new songs, and then the next time my enthusiasm had faded a little. Thursday was a little underwhelming too. I definitely recognized most of the same songs so I don't know if anything actually changed about the arrangements or it was just my reaction to them. When I saw them last year, he said they were going to start recording an album in July, but it's been almost a year since then with no release date in sight. They only played for about 45 minutes, all unreleased material, so even if he hasn't explicitly disowned Travistan, he's not even willing to pad the set with any of those songs anymore. I'll still stick up for that album to an extent, even if I understand the criticisms. He was always going to hook up with Death Cab people and make an acoustic album that didn't suit his voice at all at some point, but now that he's got it out of his system he can do something else. And I always really liked how it was a political record, but in a really whimsical and kind of metaphysical way, not at all the usual strident harDCore political statement. The new songs disappointingly seem to be going in a kind of bland direction, with a lot of lyrics about liking someone or being in love and so on, but maybe once there's a lyric sheet I'll find some more depth in there. There were a definitely 2 or 3 really good songs at the end of teh set, though.
*"Represent" is the hidden track on Travistan, which they played at the Talking Head last year, although not on Thursday. Hopefully it's still in their set now and then, it's probably be the best song on that album and if it had been featured more prominently, the album might not have been so maligned.
I like the fact that there's a decent rock club within a 15-minute walk of my apartment now, but since I moved back to Fells Point last year, I've only gone to Fletcher's twice, both times in the past two weeks, to see the Travis Morrison on Thursday, and before that Private Eleanor. That's mainly because the number of Fletcher's shows I'm even remotely interested in seeing dropped dramatically around the time that the Ottobar moved to a larger location a few years ago and started booking the same size bands. Also, the year's almost half over, and out of the dozen or so shows I've seen this year, Thursday was only the 2nd one where a Baltimore artist wasn't the headliner and/or the act I was primarily there to see. I've just been really locally focused lately. And Travis is from D.C. so it's not even really far off.
I got there just as the first band, Madman Films, were playing the second-to-last song of their set. It sounded pretty cool, in a stereotypical DC way (like a composite of a bunch of Dischord bands with Shudder To Think-esque vocals), but then their last song was long and plodding and I kinda wished I'd seen more of their other songs. The second band, Cataract Camp, were alright. Every member of the band except the bassist sang, and the drummer had a headset mic, not a Janet Jackson-style one, but hanging from a headband directly in front of his face, which just looked super nerdy and probably uncomfortable. As a drummer, I have to respect anyone who can play and sing at the same time, because I know when I'm playing I'm too out of breath to even speak, and well, forget about being that coordinated. But the guy had a voice that was so annoying that it's hard not imagining that he was trying to sound annoying on purpose, like that scene in Dumb And Dumber where Lloyd asks if you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world. And they also had a really obnoxious sense of humor, saying stuff like "this song is about..." and then making up something inane, before every single song. That said, I liked what was going on in some of their songs musically.
The Travis Morrison Hellfighters are the band that Travis formed about a year and a half ago, after the initial keyboard-heavy touring band for Travistan, that he began writing an entirely new set of songs with. I saw them a couple times last year, and the first time I was pretty impressed by the new band and the new songs, and then the next time my enthusiasm had faded a little. Thursday was a little underwhelming too. I definitely recognized most of the same songs so I don't know if anything actually changed about the arrangements or it was just my reaction to them. When I saw them last year, he said they were going to start recording an album in July, but it's been almost a year since then with no release date in sight. They only played for about 45 minutes, all unreleased material, so even if he hasn't explicitly disowned Travistan, he's not even willing to pad the set with any of those songs anymore. I'll still stick up for that album to an extent, even if I understand the criticisms. He was always going to hook up with Death Cab people and make an acoustic album that didn't suit his voice at all at some point, but now that he's got it out of his system he can do something else. And I always really liked how it was a political record, but in a really whimsical and kind of metaphysical way, not at all the usual strident harDCore political statement. The new songs disappointingly seem to be going in a kind of bland direction, with a lot of lyrics about liking someone or being in love and so on, but maybe once there's a lyric sheet I'll find some more depth in there. There were a definitely 2 or 3 really good songs at the end of teh set, though.
*"Represent" is the hidden track on Travistan, which they played at the Talking Head last year, although not on Thursday. Hopefully it's still in their set now and then, it's probably be the best song on that album and if it had been featured more prominently, the album might not have been so maligned.
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