DBF’s first foray into the Pritzker Music Pavilion at Millennium Park was last night to check out the DCFC/Rogue Wave tour. The venue is actually pretty nice and the sound was pretty good even out on the lawn where we were sitting, but no one designed this thing with the intention of anyone beyond the seating area actually seeing anything on stage. From pretty much everywhere on the lawn you can just barely see the light fixtures sitting probably 40 feet above the stage. I guess if you were watching the symphony or something it wouldn’t really matter because you would just want to hear, but when you are talking about bands and concerts, not being able to even remotely see who is playing is just a little bit weird. But despite that, we persevered, and the weather cooperated, and we got through the show.
Rogue Wave was up first, and they were quite good. Once again, I couldn’t really see them from where we were, but I did wander over to the side to snap some photos so I saw them briefly. I like this band and I would imagine they are probably headed for big things soon. Unfortunately I was unable to get tickets to their Schuba’s stint earlier this year which would have been really cool, but hopefully they will be back to Chicago soon playing someplace that isn’t a giant alien spaceship. They of course dropped their hit “Lake Michigan”. They sounded pretty good, but again, hopefully I will be able to see them in a normal venue sometime soon. They will be playing Lollapalooza this summer in Chicago so be sure to check them out there.
Death Cab came out after them, and Death Cab was pretty good I thought, better than I expected. I have never been the hugest DCFC fan in the world, but as I mentioned in my review of their new album, I thought that the new album was a good direction for the band as opposed to ‘Plans’ just for the sake of having more interesting songs and being more interesting to listen to. The slow piano ballads on ‘Plans’ are good songs, but to me are just no fun to listen to and kind of boring. Fortunately though, for this show, they mainly dropped new album material and more upbeat material from prior albums, which all worked very well together, and there wasn’t much of the slow narcotic jams from ‘Plans’ present here. I think it works much better for a live show anyway, and while I have never seen them live before so I can’t really compare it to anything, I will say that the live show was pretty good because they really kept it higher energy (for them at least).
Again, like Rogue Wave, no one on the lawn could see them, nor could we see the privileged seated people, so I can’t really comment much on the energy of the show between band and crowd, but just from the sound it sounded like they did alright in that respect. They closed out with “Transatlanticism”, which I thought worked very well (at the end of maybe a 4-5 song encore). I had never really had much of a desire to see DCFC because their music is so chilled out I wondered if there would be much energy, but they were actually pretty upbeat and it was a pretty good show.
I will say again, this is not a venue that rock bands need to be playing honestly. I understand the appeal of having a show in the park and on the lake and all that, but as far as a show, the venue is terrible. I guess if you’re intention is for less than half of the crowd to actually be able to see the band, then it would be perfect. It is a place that is better suited to symphonies and the like, and is just too big and unwieldy to produce an actually *great* rock show. That being said, despite that, I though both bands put on a pretty solid show, and I would say if you love these guys then I would recommend checking them out on this current tour, because I think the new material works very well with the more energetic old material.
Death Cab For Cutie – Cath… – From Narrow Stairs
Rogue Wave – California – From Descended Like Vultures
