Le Fleur, the Raven and the Writing Desk and Color Animal @ the Red Room (6/29/13)

Le Fleur was one of the handful of bands who made me think, "Hey, there's something going on in this here Boise music scene."  So when I learned that this would be their last show ever, I felt obliged to go and bid them farewell.  Talk about the Raven and the Writing Desk's dynamite performance at the WavePOP house gave me extra incentive to check this show out.

I counted twenty people when I got to the Red Room.  When Le Fleur took the stage, I counted around ninety (there could've been more).  A fine turnout.

Unfortunately, I worked the closing shift at a new part-time job, so I missed Storie Grubb's opening set.  Oh well.  Hopefully, I'll get to see/hear him and the Holy Wars soon--they've been working on some promising stuff lately.

Color Animal sounded murkier here than they did at the Flying M; I couldn't hear the guitars weave together quite as well.  Most likely, this was just due to the Red Room's acoustics.  Anyway, that was a pretty minor quibble since they sounded just as tuneful and rocking as they did the night before.  Hopefully, the slightly larger crowd will encourage them to come back around sometime.

The Raven and the Writing Desk played next.  One gentleman described this Denver band to me as sounding like King Crimson joining with the Dresden Dolls to cover the Murder City Devils and Black Sabbath.  That trumps pretty much anything I can come up with ("a more symphonic Tom Waits or Murder By Death" sounds awfully weak by comparison).  Eerie violin, rumbling drums, crunching guitar, pounding piano and cool xylophone swirled around Julia LiBassi's soaring, swooning moan and cabaret-tinged tunes.  Would've made a helluva double bill with Minor Birds.  They'll be back, LiBassi said.  I hope so.

Le Fleur closed out the night with possibly their best set ever (that I've seen).  Their steady, relentless rhythms and howling fog of guitars sounded good and fierce.  Meanwhile, Ivy Meissner worked some grit into her growl, snarl and wail.  The crowd bounced, swayed and cheered wildly as the band scraped their repertoire bare ("At this point, we really only have a couple left.  For reals!").  It's sad that there won't be any more of this.  Still, a very fine note to go out on.

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First Borns and Color Animal @ the Flying M Concert-Garage (6/28/13)

A band I'd never seen before was going to play the Flying M out in Nampa.  That was all I needed to see.  I marked the show down on the calendar.

Not many others did.  There were six people at the concert-garage when I got there.  The audience never rose over fifteen.  So it goes, I guess.

Color Animal played first.  I knew that this Salt Lake City group would play the Red Room the next night.  By the end of this set, I was hoping that they'd play to a much larger crowd there.  Their boyish vocals, their sunny tunes, their bright, weaving guitars, their straight-ahead basslines and their fluid, driving drums sounded like a cross between the Strokes and the Very Most.  Wiry, dreamy, rocking.

In the modest crowd was a family whom the band apparently knew from SLC.  Didn't hear them griping about the drive out to Nampa...

First Borns played next.  This group seems to rock harder each time I see them, and this set was no exception.  Christopher Smith worked a little sneer into his vocals, Alex Hecht slashed away at his guitar strings and Erik Butterworth's drumming had a nice muscular swing to it.  They may have sounded a little ragged at times, but that just added to the punkish feel of this set.  Smith said that they might retire "Gene," the first song that they wrote together, after this set.  I like that song okay, but considering their uptick in intensity, I'm more interested in what they'll come up with next.

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