Boy Kill Boy @ the Paradise, 6.30 with every show comes a new crowd, some of which are very specific to the headliner of the night. the common crowd is a bunch of 18-to-25-year-olds, often wearing predominantly dark stripes, skirts, or tight jeans. the Morningwood show, being all ages, was packed with fourteen-year-old girls, strangely enough. on Friday night, though, the Paradise was packed with people in their mid-thirties and up, some under the delusion that punk is not dead and some seemingly unfamiliar with the location they'd just been dropped in. whatever the case, we probably brought the average age of the crowd down significantly; it was a change from the normal atmosphere.

when Boy Kill Boy took the stage first for the second to last show of their tour with the apparently re-popular Echo & The Bunnymen, we were probably in the minority that was there primarily for the boys from London (and so generously on the guest list, to boot). they entered with a confidence usually reserved for much more aged and weathered bands - and promptly proceeded to win over the crowd. as the review on their official site says:

Call Boy Kill Boy's debut album Civilian anything you like - epic, ravenous, doomy, electrified, billowing, bilious, brilliant - what leaps out is just how brazenly alive it is.

those claims being made for their recorded work, i'm sure you can imagine that their live show is just that much more alive. they jumped right into it, opening with the same explosive two songs that open the album, and immediately we were greeted by a wall of sound. tight chords, clear vocals, intensity surging through their instruments. the energy ran rampant through the crowd, turning heads and convincing certain people who claimed to have never heard BKB to pretend they were mouthing the words. when they started Suzie, their addmitedly poppiest tune, the crowd was all into it and the set finished strong. the four of them were really just happy to be there, wearing their scarves like the good little British boys they are and playing the music that it took years of rediscovery and broken up bands to settle upon.

Echo & The Bunnymen went on after a brief intermission to clear the stage and the crowd exploded. it was pretty apparent why the older folks had gathered at the club that night, and why we just weren't feeling it. maybe you had to be from that generation or something, but they seemed like jaded performers, confident almost to the point of cockiness. to make up for the lack of words i could understand, the entire audience sang the words along with them; for the experience they've had in touring and performing, there seemed to be too much extraneous noise; and to top it off, they looked like they were barely into their own show. i'm sure that there's a whole lot of dissent out there for my opinion, but call me a whippersnapper, i know what i saw and heard.



  alexander  12:27 PM  |  view comments (1)