Sunday, February 26, 2006

Starlight Mints @ The Cain's Ballroom



The Starlight mints made the short trip from the city to the Cain's ballroom and brought along four other groups. After a slow start(worked until nine) we made it to the venue in time to see Ester Drang a group I knew nothing about. Ester Drang is one of the the many fine groups on the Jade Tree label but unlike a lot of their label mates they were a pretty emo free indie rock act. Admittedly they had very little going on on stage with the lead singer being on one side and the rest of the band all crammed into the other half of the stage but their music was great. They were a little more of a shoegazer group than usually like but they really were on last night and I am a new convert.
The Starlight mints had a thee piece string section with them this time that they were able to use gorgeously. They opened with two great new songs . In fact the set was heavy with new material and it was all excellent(but no Brass Digger). PG! hit the nail on the head when, after Black Cat(picture above left) he described the vibe as very "Saturday morning cartoon". The new material does seem to be a step in a more structured less distractingly quirky direction. The new stuff was well balanced by some great lder tunes including the aforementioned Black Cat and Submarine #3. The new album will be out in the next few weeks and promises to be a great one I can't wait to give it a good workout on the old mp3 player.
Another thing I will point out is the fact that the drummer(pictured above) wore headphones under his stocking cap. A look that I found endlessly hilarious.

1 comment:

lua said...

the new album sounds BO-ring! i love black cat- i don't think that it has a childish feel. structure smructure, i think what they had worked. i guess i shoulda been there. we shall see.