Post by Heather on Apr 13, 2009 15:48:32 GMT -5
I can't tell if they liked him or hated him, but he's in the article/blog whatever
Full Article
The Academy Is.. played San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord 3/17 and solo act Evan Taubenfeld opened for them. If nothing else Taubenfeld was a perfectly fitting choice, stylistically and temperamentally similar to The Academy Is… and equally adept at getting the girls crushing on him in the crowd warmed up. But while he complimented Academy’s style, he also, through his total lack of pretensions, made obvious TAI’s irritating excess of them. In practice, music and style, TAI is little more than a teeny-bopper heart-throb band. They would like to be taken much more seriously than that. The Academy Is… is basically this decade’s answer to the alt-rock goof-balls Blink-182, but without that group’s uninhibited joy in their immaturity: The singer for The Academy Is… a few times actually employs the word “existential,” whereas Blink-182 titled their big time break-out album “Enema of the State.” In music and genre The Academy Is… is no better, they’d just like to be. They come off as almost laughably pretentious as a result. I mean, how could anybody get away with actually writing an ellipsis into their name?
Of the two acts Taubenfeld was the more interesting performer. You couldn’t really call him a guitarist, kind of a stand-up act and flirter who happens to be holding a guitar. He never finished a song, would start one, lose the thread, start talking to the crowd, become distracted then half-heartedly start a new song till something else distracted him. Near the end of his set he told us that he’d broken up with his girlfriend, and that if anybody else in the crowd had just broken up he was there to talk about it. Well, he obviously wasn’t there to make any profound musical statements. At least he was up front about it, and even when it was transparent it was always funny. “I have ADHD,” he said once without preamble, “can’t you tell?” (When he did force himself to concentrate and play he was actually pretty good — would have liked to see more of that).
When The Academy Is… followed there was definitely more music. After watching a guy flirt on-stage for forty minutes, hearing a complete song was kind of a relief. But at the same time Taubenfeld’s carelessness stood in polar opposite to TAI’s unjustified seriousness, which fast became embarrassingly laughable. In “We’ve Got a Big Mess On Our Hands,” front-man Samuel Beckett sings emotionally about how he wants to “throw my phone into a public pool/and watch it float/and as it’s slowly sinking down become a social ghost.” Whoa. God forbid.
Full Article
The Academy Is.. played San Francisco’s Cafe Du Nord 3/17 and solo act Evan Taubenfeld opened for them. If nothing else Taubenfeld was a perfectly fitting choice, stylistically and temperamentally similar to The Academy Is… and equally adept at getting the girls crushing on him in the crowd warmed up. But while he complimented Academy’s style, he also, through his total lack of pretensions, made obvious TAI’s irritating excess of them. In practice, music and style, TAI is little more than a teeny-bopper heart-throb band. They would like to be taken much more seriously than that. The Academy Is… is basically this decade’s answer to the alt-rock goof-balls Blink-182, but without that group’s uninhibited joy in their immaturity: The singer for The Academy Is… a few times actually employs the word “existential,” whereas Blink-182 titled their big time break-out album “Enema of the State.” In music and genre The Academy Is… is no better, they’d just like to be. They come off as almost laughably pretentious as a result. I mean, how could anybody get away with actually writing an ellipsis into their name?
Of the two acts Taubenfeld was the more interesting performer. You couldn’t really call him a guitarist, kind of a stand-up act and flirter who happens to be holding a guitar. He never finished a song, would start one, lose the thread, start talking to the crowd, become distracted then half-heartedly start a new song till something else distracted him. Near the end of his set he told us that he’d broken up with his girlfriend, and that if anybody else in the crowd had just broken up he was there to talk about it. Well, he obviously wasn’t there to make any profound musical statements. At least he was up front about it, and even when it was transparent it was always funny. “I have ADHD,” he said once without preamble, “can’t you tell?” (When he did force himself to concentrate and play he was actually pretty good — would have liked to see more of that).
When The Academy Is… followed there was definitely more music. After watching a guy flirt on-stage for forty minutes, hearing a complete song was kind of a relief. But at the same time Taubenfeld’s carelessness stood in polar opposite to TAI’s unjustified seriousness, which fast became embarrassingly laughable. In “We’ve Got a Big Mess On Our Hands,” front-man Samuel Beckett sings emotionally about how he wants to “throw my phone into a public pool/and watch it float/and as it’s slowly sinking down become a social ghost.” Whoa. God forbid.