At the risk of sounding pun infected, Spaceland has always been fairly alienating in my opinion. It’s a weird combination of things—expensive drinks and the smoky back bar come to mind—but the main one has to be the shiny blue and silver backdrop that screams “you must watch me, for I am a rock band.” Considering the size of the venue (small-to-medium sized) and the relative “size” of the acts (see previous parenthetical notation), it lacks the expected intimacy that you gain at similar clubs like the Troubadour or San Diego’s Casbah. This isn’t to say that it’s not a comfortable venue—I’ve caught more great shows there than any other club in LA. That’s mainly because it has the two things going for it that really matter—good lineups and good sound. Which makes the Rosebuds/Land of Talk show there all the more disappointing, because while the evening had the first one in spades, the second was surprisingly lacking.
Following opener Secretary Bird (who stole too many pages from the Social Distortion playbook), Montreal’s Land of Talk proceeded to bang out a set that featured most of their initial EP Applause Cheer Boo Hiss as well as a handful of new tracks. Singer Elizabeth Powell slipped off her flip-flops immediately upon mounting the stage and played the majority of the show barefoot, except for during “All My Friends,” where she put one on to manipulate her guitar pedals. Underneath the curly mop of hair, Powell looked like a dead ringer for Officer Trudy Weigel on Reno 911 (minus the creepy asexuality/hypersexuality), especially when she would softly smile to herself in the middle of lines. Not smiling was bassist Chris McCarron, whose permanent scowl was owed mainly to the technical difficulties that the band encountered, like the drum mic falling off, too much reverb on Powell’s vocals and an overpowering hum that they just couldn’t shake. The band soldiered on, however, and sounded almost exactly the same live as they did on record, much to the delight of the highly interactive crowd.
The technical difficulties carried on through to the Rosebuds set. Keyboardist Kelly Crisp was unable to be heard for the first half of the band’s set—kind of a shame, since she seemed to sing with her entire body: head thrown back, on tiptoes, eyes wide. Luckily, most of her vocal duties came on the back end of the set list, which was heavy with the John Hughes-esque dance pop sound that characterizes the band’s latest album Night of the Furies, including the undeniably feet-moving “Get Up, Get Out.” Lead singer Ivan Howard gently taunted the crowd with refrains of “People say L.A. doesn’t dance,” but it was Crisp who finally prevailed, inviting up a handful of audience members to dance behind her during the last song before the encore. Towards the end of the evening, the loud feedback hum returned, and the genius behind the board battled it by turning everything up to eardrum-shattering levels, prompting some audience members to escape to the back bar for the remainder of the evening. It made the obligatory encore seem a little out of place, since the area in front of the band thinned considerably during the last few songs. The band was unfazed, infusing the evening with tight, energetic songs, battling and finally winning in their quest to make the audience uncross their arms and get down.
The Rosebuds on Myspace.
Land of Talk on Myspace.
