Shins & Viva Voce & Sheriff Taylor

Went to see the Shins, Saturday night. The show was in Winston-Salem, a city about two hours from us, so we made a day out it - went up to Mt. Airy, which is Andy Griffith's hometown, and the inspiration for the town of Mayberry on the old Andy Griffith Show. It's a cute little town up in the hills, and the old downtown strip is basically a museum to Andy and the show. We had lunch at one of the many diners. Then we went back to Winston-Salem for the show.

First up, Viva Voce:

Sony P7

It's a husband/wife pair. He sings, plays drums, guitar, keyboard, harmonica and theramin. Often, as in the picture above, he played guitar and sang, while playing drums with his feet. Most impressive. She sang and played guitar - doing these this wicked howling feedback-and-bent-string stoner-rock leads (Neil Young, Jay Mascis, etc) through all the songs. She was just awesome.

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For the last song she pulled out this crazy double-necked Danelectro baritone/guitar (you can see it in the rack behind her). Total rock.

Their style seemed to center on a kind of organic, stomping rock: sometimes a little Yo La Tengo noisy sweetness, sometimes a little Zeppelin or 70's-glam-rock bombast. But unlike another popular (former) husband/wife duo, Viva Voce doesn't really do the retro minimalist thing; their songs are much fuller and more complex than anything the White Stripes do. They were excellent.

For Viva Voce, we managed to get right up front. But then, during the intermission, I had to take a leak... and by the time I got back, the crowd had compressed and turned defensive and surly, and I couldn't fight my way back to where Mrs Cleek was standing - I tried, but kept getting deflected. So, I gave up and had to watch the Shins from the outside edge of the crowd. And, therefore, the pictures reeealllly suck...

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The Shins were great. I'm not sure why, but I was expecting them to be kind of sloppy and boring to watch and to not quite be able to pull off the songs without all the studio stuff. But, I was completely wrong about that. Not only were they great fun to watch, they sounded fantastic; the singer is really amazing - and it's strange to hear that voice come out of a guy that looks like Kevin Spacey. They made the songs from the first album, which are swimming in effects, with the vocals pushed way down, sound even better. And, best of all, they got me to pay attention to some songs from their newest album that I'd been ignoring. El yay!

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I recorded a few songs on the little camera, but they came out pretty poorly - it was really loud so they're all compressed to death. You can probably find it on YouTube anyway - every other person there was taking pictures or movies with cameras and cellphones.

4 thoughts on “Shins & Viva Voce & Sheriff Taylor

  1. cleek

    not a bad idea.

    i imagine it’d be pretty surreal to let it fly while jammed tight against a half-dozen other people.

  2. Bobby Lightfoot

    I’ve only had really good experiences letting fly while jammed tight against half a dozen other people.

    Hey, who on god’s green earth has it made more than the guy from Viva Voce? I ask you? Except maybe Chris Stein from Blondie in 1977?

    Dude must’ve been a Buddhist for SO many lifetimes.

  3. cleek

    Hey, who on god’s green earth has it made more than the guy from Viva Voce?

    well, me. (hi wife!)

    but yeah, the whole show, the dude was grinning like the happiest guy in the world. we were all like “woah, that chick’s rockin!” and he’s looking back at us like “i know! how cool is that?!”

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