The Sound of Your Laugh Through the Wall: The National @ Terminal 5

I was excited about going to this show last night for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that The National’s newest album has quickly become one of my go-to records to listen to while commuting to and from work. I was totally bummed to miss their free show at the Seaport earlier this summer so I pounced when they announced this show. And it’s a good thing: the show quickly sold out and the 2 shows they subsequently announced in Willyburg for tonight and tomorrow night sold out equally as fast. It was like the Arcade Fire concert-frenzy from the earlier half of the year all over again.

The show started on a strange note with St. Vincent as the opening act. She’s been getting a lot of good press recently and I was eager to hear her play: I’m always up for trying new female artists. For the first couple of songs I was vaguely puzzled with her fascination with her drum machine but I kept an open mind since it was clear that a musically-informed sense of experimentation was driving her. One thing you cannot say about St. Vincent is that she doesn’t know how to play or that she is making noise for the sake of making noise. I think her stuff is smart—it kept reminding me of a one-woman Sigur Ros, although I’m sure that characterization might crinkle some brows. But as she slowly made the transformation from experimental to more traditional pop with each song, I couldn’t really shake the gimmicks. By the time she announced her last song of the set I was very much over it. I’m seeing her again next week at CJM and will try and give her another shot but I think I’m not jumping on this particular bandwagon.

I have, however, unabashedly jumped on the National bandwagon. And I’ll admit that I was late coming to this particular party. I didn’t even listen to their acclaimed album, Alligator, until after I’d heard their newest, Boxer, which is really a shame. Not to mention the two albums preceding these! While I’m surely not the first to lump them together with Interpol, I do like them for nearly the same reasons and they do have a similar sound to me. Thus, I was a bit nervous about seeing them live since my recent experiences with Interpol in concert have been a bit on the disappointing side. I was worried that their layers would similarly get lost in the mix and/or they would sound like a cookie-cutter version of their studio album (which is not bad so much as boring). But it turns out that I really shouldn’t have worried: they seemed to revel in their live performance last night and, rather than plastically perform their allotted roles, each musician in the band let the music breathe without letting the band as a whole slip into unrecognizable jam-band-ness. Here’s an example: upon taking the stage and starting in on the first song, the lead singer and other members of the band had small smiles creeping over their faces as they were presented with the sold-out crowd pressed together on the floor and peering down at them from two levels of balconies. As a result, the typically slow and slightly morose song they opened with became the tiniest bit faster and much more upbeat with the influence of their obvious excitement. It was the same song, without being the same song. Performances like that is why I go to live shows in the first place—to see a new take on an old favorite and to feel your own effect on them as they, in turn, effect you. Awesome.

My other reason for anticipation about the show last night was the opportunity to check out Terminal 5, the new venue acquired by the Bowery Presents people who are also responsible for two of my favorite spaces in the city to see shows (the Merc and the Bowery Ballroom). And I was disappointed to discover that I hated the space, although the out-of-the-way location makes the disappointment matter a bit less to me. Like the Ballroom, it has great sightlines from the floor and balconies where you can perch and look down on the action from above (T5 has two levels of balconies to the BB’s one), which are both great points in its favor. However, the sound is easily distorted under and deep into the balconies (a pain when you are at the bars located on any of the floors and, generally, located anywhere in the space but directly in front of the stage or directly on the edge of the balconies) and the warehouse-like design and frigid temperature of the space made it hard for me to get comfortable. Although. If the National were playing there again, I'd so be there.

* The picture above has been supplied by mucow on flikr. You can see more shots of last nights show from this user here.