Jack’s Mannequin / Head Automatica / theAUDITION / We Are The Fury @ Philly 2/24

The Electric Factory was absolutely packed.

We Are The Fury was weak, I don’t really understand this band’s appeal. theAUDITION rocked the house, and their new material is really good.

Head Automatica was solid, but the setlist could have used some more older tunes. Daryl is looking/sounding great. Good performance.

And the real reason I was there, obviously, was Jack’s Mannequin. I’ll just get straight to it: this show is in my Top 10 or Top 5 shows I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen hundreds of shows in my life. Andrew’s stage presence was stellar, and his voice was as good as it’s ever sounded. Bobby was perfect on guitar, Jay was great on the skins, and Dr. J has never ceased to amaze me on the bass–the guy, as Andrew put it, is “from another planet”.

The show kicked off with the PA blasting Holiday From Real a capella, and Andrew and co kicking into the song live a minute later or so. The songs they played (not in order):

Holiday From Real
The Mixed Tape
Bruised
I’m Ready
West Coast Winter (with first-time-ever piano only intro since Bobby’s cab was fucked)
Dark Blue (with special intro)
Miss Delaney
Kill The Messenger (with live outro)
Rescued
MFEO (with U2 cover in the middle)
Into The Airwaves (with special intro)
Last Straw
Heroine
She Paints Me Blue
21 And Invincible (JM electric version, different than Soco electric)
All I Have To Do Is Dream

Andrew explained Last Straw (he was sitting at home drinking gin and listening to Katrina reports and decided how he hates Bush, etc). He said how She Paints Me Blue is about living in a small room with just a blue light with a girl–and related it to Dark Blue, about the same girl.

Heroine was a nice surprise, but I’ve always liked how PRP is faster. The Every Brothers cover was great, and he even through in a little “With or Without You” into MFEO. Andrew was definitely getting drunk, putting away the Jagermeister (which he said is his only link to the frat boys in the crowd, haha) and pounding the brews.. he was going on about love energy in the world, and how there’s so much of it in the crowd, etc.. definitely tipsy rambling, it was funny.

He also explained a “dare/challenge” he received: that he couldn’t jump into the crowd, get carried to the sound board, get off, jump on the sound board, then jump back into the crowd and jump back on stage and finish MFEO… needless to say, he completed this task and confetti exploded throughout the EF.

Each of the JM members got an introduction during MFEO, too, and played a nice little solo. Bobby nailed his solo and wouldn’t stop so Andrew kept feeding him alcohol until he’d back down; Dr. J played some ridiculous finger tapping solo on his bass; Jay rocked the drums for a little while before falling back into the MFEO cadence.

One of the best shows I’ve ever seen, every song sounded great, and there were always little surprises thrown into every song, whether it was a new intro/outro, a piano solo, a guitar solo, or some new lyrics. Andrew’s crowd interaction was as fine as it gets, too. Great time.

The Academy Is… / The Honorary Title / As Tall As Lions / Love Arcade @ NYC 2/20

I wrote a handful of reviews of shows I’ve seen lately–I’m going to copy/paste them to inTuneMusic and them begin writing them exclusively for here. I hope they transfer over well, and thanks for reading.

Although the show sold out Irving Plaza in a mere seconds, the band put more tickets on sale day of show; they didn’t sell out those extra tickets, and there were probably about 20-30 tickets people had to sell they didn’t even get to sell. It was far from packed and did not look “sold out” by any means.

Love Arcade was garbage.. think Hellogoodbye-ness, sorta, except worse. Maybe, I doubt that’s possible.

As Tall As Lions, solid, of course. The Honorary Title was better than I remember them being, good job.

The Academy Is… played thirteen songs (the most I’ve ever seen from the band), including Seed, LAX, and the new single. Encore was Attention (which I hadn’t heard in like.. a year from them) and Checkmarks. The band was as tight as I’ve seen a punk-pop/pop-rock band play in a long time, and William was great on vocals. I didn’t realize their drummer does so many vocals, and I’ve seen this band a LOT.. I must have forgotten, or it’s new to their set.

The new songs are good; Seed “means a heap to us” said, William, and it was actually a pretty different styled song from the band. I liked it. LAX is much better live than it is studio, and the single, which I heard for the first time, sounded alright.

Nothing too eventful otherwise, it was a standard show; the crowd was 80-90% jail bait girls, I’d guess there may have only been 100 people over 18 in attendance (holds 1100), so when a “pit” broke out it was hard not to laugh as a bunch of little girls grabbed their ankles and “danced” or whatever it was they were doing. The guys dancing were even more embarrassing though.

Interesting side note, I was standing next to a woman who looked fifty, and I assumed she was there with her little kids; I was going to talk to her and ask her if she ever saw Zeppelin, Ramones, or anyone back in the day, and to comment that “wow Love Arcade sucks compared to real bands I’m sure you used to see”, but I think she was one of Love Arcade’s moms, as she got a shoutout from the band.. for turning fifty yesterday, haha. Glad I didn’t open that can of worms.