The announcement a few months ago that the Posies would be touring in support of their new album, Blood/Candy, by opening for Brendan Benson and performing as his backing band was exciting for me, since I like both acts a lot, but also a little surprising. They're all pretty much the same age and make power pop and have a lot of the same fans, but I'd never heard of their paths crossing before and I kind of think of them as being from different generations; Benson's debut One Mississippi came out in 1996, the same year the Posies released their fourth album and their major label career was winding down and they started to unravel and temporarily break up. And the guys in the Posies have a good amount of experience working as backing musicians, but usually for older, more established acts: Ken Stringfellow with R.E.M., Jon Auer with, um, William Shatner, both of them with Big Star. Still, this was clearly great news and their show at the 9:30 Club on Wednesday night totally lived up to my expectations.

It's so rare that I go to a show at the 9:30 that isn't sold out well in advance that it was actually kind of refreshing to be able to just get there right before the act I wanted to see, find easy parking, and buy a ticket on the spot without any extra online surcharges. I think the Posies were just starting as I came through the main entrance, I could hear Jon and Ken talking onstage for a minute before they started "Dream All Day" but I'm not entirely sure if that was their first song. I'm a huge fan of the Posies and love dozens of their songs, so it was somewhat frustrating that the first time I got to see them live in 5 years, they were playing a shorter opening set heavy on songs from a new album that I'm not totally crazy about. But even when they managed to avoid all my favorite Blood/Candy songs, they convinced me that the ones I hadn't been into, like "Plastic Paperbacks" and "Licenses To Hide," are worth way more than I'd realized with great live performances.

The older selections in the Posies' had a somewhat predictable but satisfying sampling of their back catalog: the first three songs from Frosting On The Beater, "Everybody Is A Fucking Liar," "Throwaway," and "Apology," which they apparently hadn't played live in a long time, so that was kind of a treat. And the one tune from their last album, 2005's Every Kind Of Light, "Conversations," has held up really well, love that both Jon and Ken take guitar solos on that one. I've always been a little rough on the Posies' current drummer, Darius Minwalla, whose playing I just don't like quite as much as their '90s drummers Mike Musberger and Brian Young, but he definitely does the songs justice. And the band's two frontmen just have great stage presence, particularly Ken, who still has rock star cheekbones and does flying leaps and animated strums through even the midtempo songs and constantly makes odd non-sequitur jokes between songs.

Jon and Ken returned a short time after their set to back Brendan Benson, who brought his own drummer to flesh out the band. Benson is not one of the most charismatic performers I've ever seen; he barely moved or said a word between songs the one other time I saw him live in 2002. So it wasn't surprising that the Posies guys sometimes stole the spotlight from him with their playing or their joking around between songs, which at one point cracked Benson up so much that he had to take a 2nd try at starting a song. His stuff sounded absolutely great with this backing band, though, and the setlist was damn near perfect. I don't think of Benson as a very consistent songwriter, but he managed to pick the 3 or 4 best songs from pretty much all of his albums, and it was fun to hear some stuff from One Mississippi like "Sittin' Pretty" and "Cherries," since he barely played anything from that album last time I saw him. I especially liked Jon's twangy lead guitar on "Alternative To Love."

When Benson started the last song of his encore, I wasn't sure what he'd play, since he'd already run through most of his best known songs, like "Metarie" and "Tiny Spark" and "Crosseyed" and "Cold Hands (Warm Heart" and "What I'm Looking For" and so on (did I mention it was a great setlist?). And then 2 seconds after he started singing, I realized oh hey, I know this, this is Big Star's "September Gurls." And 2 seconds after that, I realized oh yeah, Jon and Ken played in Big Star the last 15 years. And 2 seconds after that, I remembered oh shit, and Alex Chilton just died earlier this year, and it all became suddenly more powerful and poignant, especially since they just played this wonderful joyful classic song without acknowledging any of that context, and just smiled and said goodnight.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 19, 2010 at 11:10 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.