Liam Finn @ Bottom of the Hill
I arrived at the Bottom of the Hill right as the Federalists were ending their set. I’d wanted to see them, but you can’t always win.
Liam Finn (myspace) cam on shortly afterwards. I’d been enjoying some of I’ll Be Lightning and I was intrigued as to how his live show would be and moreso after I saw his Letterman appearance.
As with his TV appearance, the band was only two: Liam on guitars, vocals, drums and loop pedal (and theremin, briefly) and E.J. (?) on vocals, percussion and loop pedal.
Whereas the record is mostly laid back and often acoustic, the live show was a lot more high energy, electric and sometimes distortion.
I like and enjoy the appropriate use of loop/ sampling pedals; for instance, I’ve liked their use by Laura Veirs (solo), the Dodos and my friend Jeff (who’s a total master of it). But here’s the thing, the line between impressive building up of loops into a dense and wonderful on-the-spot composition and simple musician show-off wankery is sometimes a fine one. Sometimes it worked well for Finn and sometimes it didn’t.
I enjoyed some of Finn’s freak-out, dense and heavily looped song, but actually some of my favorites were some of the more straight up songs like “Gather to the Chapel” and “Wise Man”. Finn’s banter was fluid and pretty enjoyable–plus, as we know, any accent makes banter more endearing, so he won on that account.
It was a pretty good set overall.
March 10th, 2008 at 7:43 am
Hey Adrian!
That’s cool that you got to check out these shows over the past week. Thanks for the mention in the blog. I hear you on the commentary about looping, and I always wonder, on my more loop/layer heavy songs, if people think I’m overdoing it.
That being said, I saw Liam’s performance on Letterman, too, and was kind of turned off by the looping. It seemed more of a looping for looping’s sake thing to me, especially when he went over and rocked out on the drums. I like to think that, if a song is great as is without a loop, then I won’t use any loops. Kind of like the idea that no amount of production will save a horrible song.
My two cents. I know it’s dangerous for artists to comment on artists, but… come on. Can’t we just be real?
March 10th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Hey Jeff. I think Finn’s Letterman performance worked pretty well, at least on an emotional level if not on a purely musical one. I think you use the loop/ sampling tastefully, at least in the dozen or so times I’ve seen you use it.
March 11th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Looping for looping’s sake? What the heck is that supposed to mean? I saw Liam’s BotH perf. and thought he was interesting. I’d go see him again.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Pete, that would be looping to show technical skill rather than to further any musical ideas. Being technically good at any instrument or piece of equipment (like a looper) doesn’t necessarily mean being able to make good music.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
[…] seen Liam before, at the same venue, in fact. The set was quite similar, as was my reaction: I liked […]