Concert Review: FNX Best Music Poll '06 

Thanks to my friend Liz, who's made it a yearly ritual to get us tickets to the FNX Best Music Poll for my birthday, I got to head down to Lansdowne St. and listen to a bunch of bands I like.

We got there just in time to catch OK Go, a cool rocky/power pop band I've liked a lot. They've gotten a good bit of noteriety as of late from their video for "A Million Ways" which is clever and in the same vein as the Spike Jonze/Fatboy Slim videos. OK Go was one of the bands playing outdoors, so we watched from a little ways back, but the band sounded pretty great, playing a bunch of their bigger songs, including the criminally underrated "Do What You Want." They finished the set with a full on reproduction of the aforementioned "A Million Ways" video which sounds sort of stupid and pretentious ("oh, watch us imitate the video that made us moderately famous"), but came off as a bunch of guys enjoying doing goofy stuff.

Buffalo Tom and The Charlatans played the last two outdoors slots, and I didn't really pay attention to either. Buffalo Tom sounded pretty good from afar, but I've just never been that into them. The Charlatans sounded pretty good from afar, and I wanted to check them out, but by now, the sun had gone down and the wind had picked up and we decided to head into Avalon so as not to get screwed and miss out on the bands starting at 10.

We grabbed a table at Avalon, which gave us a good view of the stage and meant we could sort of avoid the mob on the floor and get in/out when we chose. I tend to not enjoy the back of a show (I'd rather be down in the middle losing my hearing), but it turned out to be a wise choice as Dear Leader came on and blew the fucking place away. Mostly it was because they came on and just balls out rocked, but it was also because they were mixed incredibly loud.

Dear Leader is one of my favorite bands, and I've written about them a good bit. This performance may have been the best I've ever seen. They were completely on their game, and when you're playing a shorter set in front of an audience who might not be there to see you, I think you tend to pick a setlist that lets you go all out. And that's what they did. Starting with my current fave song "Nightmare Alleys" they just blew through a bunch of insanely great songs, Aaron Perrino belting out each one in top form. They slowed it down for the sing along of "My Life as a Wrestler" and then finished up the set with their big hit "Raging Red" adeptly mixing in Snoop's "Gin and Juice" and completely winning over the crowd.

Nada Surf followed up right behind Dear Leader and were similarly fantastic. I've got two Nada Surf albums: the debut High/Low (which I own on cassette from college) and the most recent The Weight is a Gift. If Nada Surf sounds familiar, it's because they were the pseudo-Weezer band who had the hit "Popular" in about '96. Their recent stuff (that I've heard) sounds similar, but it's been modernized--they're more like what I think people thought Weezer would sound like today.

Anyway, they shocked the hell out of my by leading right off with "Popular" and completely rocking it out. Honestly, it didn't sound dated at all ... but that's probably because I haven't heard it in years. Nada Surf played a great set, complete with harmonies, a thoroughly entertaining drummer, and a bassist breaking and changing a string midsong. They played a couple of my favorites ("The Blankest Year" and "Concrete Bed") and obviously hit on what is their recent big hit, and one of the better songs of 2005, "Always Love." It was pretty fantastic to see the rest of the bands playing that night come down to the side of the stage and completely enamored with Nada Surf's performance.

That's when we left. There were a couple of bands left to go, but it was midnight, I was going to catch the T home, and it was a good place to cap it off. Leaving at this point also lead to my creation of the Theory of Parabolic Hotness, which I'll discuss in the near future.