By Andrew Bansal
Dec. 2nd 2011, The Troubadour, West Hollywood CA: After seeing the amazing Russian Circles gig here four nights ago, I was back at the Troubadour for this show, featuring Fair To Midland along with support from Australia’s Dead Letter Circus, and New York-based rock band Aficionado. I saw Fair To Midland for the first time very recently, when they opened for The Damned Things at the House of Blues in Anaheim last August, and they took me by surprise. They had excellent music and an incredible amount of energy, mainly due to frontman Darroh Sudderth. So I was waiting to see them again, specially as a headlining act, and last night ensured that I didn’t have to wait too long. Dead Letter Circus is also a band that came through town recently on the Animals As Leaders tour, but that was a hectic night for me and I ended up missing their set altogether. So, there was enough reason for me to check out this show even though I was still very much tired from the previous night’s Holy Grail show.
Aficionado started off the show at 8.30. They were doing a good job at playing their music, and had good on-stage energy. But their music wasn’t turning out to be my thing. The vocals were a little too melodic. The 7-piece band had a male and female singer, and I simply didn’t enjoy it whenever they did vocal harmonies. The music itself wasn’t bad at all. The male singer was good at addressing the crowd and getting them pumped up for the two bands to follow, and his band mates put in their full effort to entertain the crowd. A decent performance.
Dead Letter Circus came on next. The sound mix was bad, right from the outset, and they did nothing to fix it. The guitars were almost completely inaudible, and even though they had five members up there on stage, it sounded pretty much like a three-piece band with vocals, drums, bass and the occasional keyboards. They were all wearing in-ear monitors, so I was surprised as to why they didn’t notice the problem and made no attempt to rectify it. It made Kim Benzie’s vocals and Stewart Hill’s bass stand out a bit too much. Their music on the record isn’t dominated so much by vocals and bass, but that’s all I could hear for the most part last night. Stewart should also tone down his movements a little bit. I felt he was being a little too expressive. On the positive side, drummer Luke Williams was really good, not only on the drums but also on backing vocals. He combined very well with Stewart, and takes the credit for keeping things heavy. The part where guitarist Tom Skerji did percussion was also enjoyable. But other than that, this wasn’t the best representation of Dead Letter Circus’ sound, and I would wait till the next time to make any final judgements on them.
Fair To Midland hit the stage at about 10.25, and what ensued in the next 60 minutes took the venue by storm. As soon as his band mates hit the first note, Darroh started jumping and spinning around like a madman on stage. It was wild, to say the least. I noticed that things looked different from the last time I saw the band, and they had a new bassist, Ryan Collier and new drummer Logan Kennedy. The two of them were excellent in their performance and were energetic, but in the end, the show was all about Darroh. By saying that he exhibited a wild stage persona I do not mean to overlook his actual vocals, because his singing was as crazy as his mannerisms. He was doing a wide range of vocals, going from mid-pitch to high, to ultra-high, and doing them great. I’ve not seen any hard rock/metal vocalists attempt to pull off “throat singing”. Darroh sure did, and pulled it off perfectly. At one point, he climbed and hung atop the light tower on the side of the stage and sang for a good couple of minutes from that position. At other times he held the microphone in his mouth and dived into the crowd. With such an insane show going on, obviously the fans were getting into it as well, and mosh pits started breaking out, getting more and more intense with every song.
Guitarist Cliff Campbell was great at his instrument and contributed to the show by interacting with fans in the front row. Keyboardist Matt Langley also did his bit to perfection, while Darroh added further to the music by playing samples and a couple of other sundry instruments. Overall, it was a thoroughly entertaining 60 minutes of music and stage antics. I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of bands, but I can safely that Darroh Sudderth truly stands out as one of the most intense and eccentric frontmen I have ever seen. If you aren’t planning on checking out a Fair To Midland show on this tour, it would serve you well to change your mind. Find all the remaining tour dates here.
Rating: 8/10 (Aficionado 7/10, Dead Letter Circus 7/10, Fair To Midland 10/10)
Related: Fair To Midland (Darroh Sudderth) interview | Dead Letter Circus (Luke Williams) interview
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