Dum Dum Girls and The Morning Benders

I have two shows to talk about with you all. Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of my own to use.

Let's do this chronologically.

I saw The Morning Benders at the M-Shop on Saturday.


Because people I know keep getting jobs at the M-Shop, my opportunity to get into these shows for free keeps increasing, which is great. Thanks everyone!

I hadn't ever listened to this band, but I had heard them mentioned in a few places, and since the M-Shop schedule is usually pretty ignorable, I thought I would at least go to one of the only good shows it is going to get this semester.

Overall, I thought the whole thing was pretty mediocre. The Morning Benders, to me, are a perfect example of another one of those pop bands that I hear once, download, and never listen to again--similar to half of the bands that Pitchfork reviews between a 7.2 and an 8.3 rating. There are just entirely too many of these bands for me to keep up. If it doesn't stand out initially, I have a hard time rediscovering them in a manner that appeals to me. The Morning Benders show was not a rediscovery for me. While a few of the songs were pretty catchy, I enjoyed the noisy, feedbacking, vocal looped improvisation they used to end their set more than anything else. So, their new album Big Echo will probably sit on my iTunes with 0 listens until I go through and clear out my library like I tend to do once every few years. Judging by the crowd reactions, I feel like this will probably be the case for much of the audience.

That being said, all the dudes in the band were really nice. They were friendly and talkative on stage instead of playing some character like, say, the Dum Dum Girls.

I showed up at this show just in time to miss the two openers. Ten dollars at the door and 40 minutes later, I left the venue. While I am a sucker for the Dum Dum Girls throwback to two-minute, catchy-as-hell pop songs, it is hard to feel satisfied with my 10 dollar ticket when the band I came to see only played a 25-minute set (granted they were a great 25 minutes of song). Their show was...distant, and that is not a reference to the piles of reverb that their music does so well. One song led quickly into another and then it was over. There was a band on the stage and a crowd watching it, but the two never really connected. Normally, I don't really have a problem with this, but considering the pace of the whole event, I felt like I walked from my car, through the front doors to the venue and back to the parking lot where I got in my car and left without anything to remember or any song I had to go home and listen to.

On top of all that, the dude at Des Noise mentioned that the Dum Dum Girls were apparently so disinterested in the show that they didn't even put out any merchandise, which I didn't notice.

What is weird about this whole thing, is that, as far as my experience goes, this was actually a pretty well attended Vaudeville Mews show, and at $10 a head, it was probably a relatively worthwhile show for the band, financially speaking.

Oh well. Des Moines, Des Moines.

I am playing with Utopia Park and These Stains Is Us at the Ames Progressive on Saturday. Should be pretty cool. Both those bands will probably rip it really hard after I get my chance to chill everyone out.

Still haven't decided if I am going to any of the VEISHEA shows.