Just over a month ago, White Lung performed at KEXP in Seattle. They did four songs, Wrong Star, Snake Jaw and Down It Goes from 2014's LP Deep Fantasy, and Blow It South from 2013's 7" Songs about the South.
After the first two songs there's a semi-awkward interview featuring a host that didn't 100% take care of the fact-checking but honestly as far as these things go, the interview's pretty good. By that I mean, usually interviews like this are fairly terrible, both awkward, ignorant and boring. But this one's alright, despite the host's mistakes. I can forgive that. The interview's not a bland spew of platitudes, so there's that.
The performance itself is pretty good, but the sound in the studio does White Lung no favours. The drums and vocals are alright I guess, but the guitar sounds really far away and powerless. Lacks all punch. The bass also just comes off flat and uninspiring.
All of which comes down on White Lung themselves and their performance. However they seem to be doing their absolute best in a live scenario not as familiar to them as a bar gig for example. You're put in an environment that's not giving you your best chance to give your fullest. If they come off uninspired, which I'm not sure they do, I can't blame them. I haven't seen them live myself but my best guess is that their best performance would be in a packed bar, with as few cat-calling assholes as possible, I'd venture.
But of course they took the gig. That's what you do when something with KEXP's exposure comes knocking, even if you're White Lung, having quite a lot of momentum and publicity off Deep Fantasy.
Overall it's not that great of a performance, but mainly for things that are probably out of White Lung's control. I'm not going t give a rating, it'll suffice to say that it's alright. There are probably other, better live videos of them on youtube.
No comments:
Post a Comment